Does anyone have a recommendation for an SSD and a USB 3.0 adapter for an RPi4?
Hi,
Im using for some weeks now follow products:
SSD: Vaseky Mini mSATA 3 1,8 Inch SSD 32GB
Adapter: X850-mSATA-SSD
Work perfect with RPi even with SSD boot without SDcard!
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The Adapter and SSD im using for 1,5 years now. But for some weeks now to boot from directly on RPi4
What are you trying to do? In my case any SSD will work just fine… the most important thing is to get the right enclosure that support/detectable by Linux. I currently used ORICO 2588C3 USB 3.1 which is fast and compatible.
I was thinking about just using it as the drive for the database. Later I might try and understand all of the steps involved in using it as the boot drive for Linux on the RPi4 with HA installed through Docker. I’m not even sure if Raspberry Pi OS is what I am supposed to use as the Linux OS for the 2nd scenario.
I believe if you have your Pi’s EEPROM up to date all you need to do is clone your SD card to the SSD and it will immediately work.
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you can check out my guide on how to run your ubuntu server on RPI without SDCard. Its the best platform to run HASS on dockers.
https://krdesigns.com/articles/Boot-raspbian-ubuntu-20.04-official-from-SSD-without-microsd
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Where do I SSH from in order to upgrade the EEPROM? Is there a guide for using SSH?
Well to upgrade eeprom you will need to used microSD and in order for you to enable SSH for RPI simply after you burn the microSD or the SSD you need to go to boot folder and touch ssh This called installation headless and you will be able to SSH from any other PC/computer in the same network.
HASS intallation show away to activated SSH on your raspbianOS
I am going to try hassos_rpi4-64-5.1.img.gz after all. The blog at https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/uasp-makes-raspberry-pi-4-disk-io-50-faster points out that for the fastest transfer speed an adapter with UASP can make a difference. He also has a tutorial on how to boot from USB on the RPi4 at https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/im-booting-my-raspberry-pi-4-usb-ssd. He didn’t use a powered adapter and was able to get it to work. A day after starting this thread I purchased a Kingston 120GB A400 SATA 3 2.5" Internal SSD SA400S37/120G - HDD and ORICO 2.5 USB C External Hard Drive Enclosure, SATA III to USB3.1 Type C for HDD/SSD Support Max 4TB with UASP. I’ve received them and tested them yesterday. They work on a PC but the RPi4 won’t power the SSD so I ordered a powered SSD adapter case - UGREEN External Hard Drive Enclosure for 3.5 2.5 Inch SATA SSD HDD, USB 3.0 to SATA III Hard Drive Case with UASP because I hadn’t seen the blog posts by Jeff. I am going to also buy Inateck 2.5 Hard Drive Enclosure, USB 3.0 External Hard Drive Case, UASP Supported and return the UGreen if the Inatek works with USB power.
I’ve used a mix of https://www.tomshardware.com/how-to/boot-raspberry-pi-4-usb and https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/im-booting-my-raspberry-pi-4-usb-ssd to get the RPi4 to boot from USB. I tested it out by putting an SD card with 64 bit Raspberry OS in a USB reader and plugging that in to the USB port of the RPi4. It worked flawlessly after I found out I couldn’t use the 32 bit Raspberry OS on the SD card. One of those sites didn’t point that necessity out.
tl;dr - I plan to use a Kingston 120GB A400 SATA 3 2.5" Internal SSD SA400S37/120G - HDD and Inateck 2.5 Hard Drive Enclosure, USB 3.0 External Hard Drive Case, UASP Supported as the boot drive for hassos_rpi4-64-5.1.
The Inateck 2.5 Hard Drive Enclosure, USB 3.0 External Hard Drive Case, UASP Supported works great as the adapter for the SSD as a boot drive. It’s inexpensive, looks nice, and doesn’t need external power reducing the need for even more cables.
Booting from an SSD with HA on an RPi4 is a much nicer setup than booting from an SD card.
Now I have to figure out my next issue which is that the database grows way too fast which caused the issue with the SD cards to begin with Hopefully I can figure that out.
For SSD’s and adapters that work (and don’t work) with the RPi 4, see this guide by James Chambers.
Consider to run HA in Docker using the IOTstack setup. Graham Garner did all the heavy lifting and provided a couple of scripts that will do the initial setup, backups etc. It is well documented, with an active Discord Forum.
Also see the RPi 4 USB boot and RPi with Docker/IOTstack videos by Andreas Spiess on how to set up a RPi using a SSD.
NOTE: Whatever you do, don’t bother to buy a SSD from KingSpec. It lasted me a full three months before it crapped out on me.