SSD for Raspberry 4+

Configuration
1

Hello,

Last night after 4 months of use, my M2 SSD drive was partially corrupted and caused my installation to crash. Luckily I had a good backup system. I reinstalled HA on a new 3.5 inch SSD and it works again.

But this is slower than an M2 SSD.

The problem is that the ssd heats up a lot and quickly becomes corrupted. How are you doing? Do you have a good external case for the SSD with efficient cooling? You don’t use an M2 2280 ssd?

I wouldn’t want to buy a new M2 SSD and have it burn out again in 4 months.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the matter.

2

Maybe the SSD capacity is too low causing alot of thrashing, or it is used too much because you don’t have enough memory? I have a RPI 4 (8Gigs of RAM) running 24/7 with a Samsung T7 1TB drive attached via the USB3.0 cable that came with the SSD. Both the SSD and the RPI are as cool as can be. The SSD runs ~40 degrees C and the SSD is cool to the touch.

Originally, in my experience even with the above specs it would run hot because originally I had an ‘unhealthy’ setup as I ran Home Assistant Supervised with the 32bit Raspi OS that came with the RPI. Even with the 8gigs of ram on the RPI 4 and the 1 TB SSD it would run pretty hot and I even wrote a daemon to turn fans on above 60 degrees C and turn them off below 50 degrees C.

I bit the bullet (now my setup is ‘healthy’ and ‘supported’) and installed the corect Debian OS and more than anything else, going from 32 bit to 64 bit made the whole thing run MUCH cooler. When finally re-implementing the daemon for scontrolling the fans on my setup - to properly test for the fans I had to purposely run an app I have that would just max out all 4 cores - and had to run it for about 30 minutes before I could even get the CPU to reach 60 degrees C (to test my code turning on the fans) - so other than for my tests the fans have never had to even run!

Are you running 32 bit or 64 bit. and what is the RAM and the capacity of your SSD?

Here is the case I am using, which is not just a case. The entire thing is a huge heat sink so rather than just a case the top and bottom are thick slabs of metal:

GeeekPi Raspberry Pi 4 Armor Case with Dual Fan

3

The best case I was able to found for RPI + M2 SSD is the Argon One.

It is possible to get SATA or NVMe version.
Advantage is that the converter between drive and USB at RPI is tested to not be a bottleneck.

I am using for already approx. two years and I ma fully satisfied.

4

I also have an M2 SSD in an ArgonOne Active Cooling case - running for about 18 months now with no problems. Quiet, with a controller add-on so the fan isn’t running all the time.

You might also try using Recorder to reduce the number of writes, if you haven’t already

5

I also use an Argon ONE case for my main setup and it works great. However, I use this standalone case for an M.2 drive on a separate setup:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08G14NBCS/

The enclosure allows the system to boot from the SSD just fine.

I hope this helps!

6

Thank you for your answers.
I finally bought a 2.5" SSD made to work with NAS.
I had no more worries and I gained in stability.
I had an Nvme 1T SSD before this and couldn’t manage the temperature. I will actually take an active heat sink when I have to change in the future.