Question Add SSD to Pi 4

Jan 24, 2021
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Tom’s article, How to Boot Raspberry Pi 4 From a USB SSD or Flash Drive - makes it look painless now to add an external SSD. I truly want to try using a Pi 4 for everyday tasks for a week - just to prove to myself how powerful a Pi can be. Is adding an external SSD and booting from it a dramatic enhancement? I have a new Kingston 2.5” 960GB that is dying to be used for something.
 

TommyTwoTone66

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Apr 24, 2021
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What OS do you plan on using? I have a Pi4 8GB and browsing the web with Chromium is painfully slow on the official "Raspberry PI OS". Basic sites like Google are fine but anything heavy like Youtube or Netflix it really struggles with.

For custom OS installs like RetroPie or LibreLec that give you a basic menu system which has been optimised for the Pi then it performs really well, but for general purpose Linux I don't think it's quite powerful enough or the display drivers haven't been optimised enough for the Pi 4 GPU yet or whatever, so it's really sluggish. I don't think an SSD will make much difference since it seems to be the system itself that is slow on Desktop Linux.
 
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mamasan2000

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Check this guys videos
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1aRGkH3bgw

He also tried NVME SSDs, which maxed out at 400 megs/s roughly. Meaning the CPU was the bottleneck most probably. If the CPU is 100% pegged, you are not getting much else done at the same time.
I haven't seen videos with USB 3 spinning harddisks but those also reach 100 megs/s on a PC. So I don't know if an SSD is even an upgrade.
 

kanewolf

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This is the guide I used -- https://jamesachambers.com/raspberry-pi-4-usb-boot-config-guide-for-ssd-flash-drives/
The most important thing is getting an adapter that is compatible. The first one I bought had 30MB/s performance after purchasing the UGREEN adapter I got 300MB/s with an MX500 SATA SSD. I was pleased.
With current firmware, all I had to do was use the Raspbain installer on Windows, to install the OS on the SSD. Then boot the PI. The first boot scripts took care of setting up the SSD. Both of my PI4s have SATA SSDs.
 

TommyTwoTone66

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But, does it really matter.

does it matter if the simple act of reading a file maxes out your CPU to 100%? Yes absolutely it does. Particularly when we're working with a RISC cpu with little in the way of multi-threading or multi-tasking optimisation. If the max the CPU can handle is 400MB/s, it makes little sense to read files that fast, since presumably you also want to do other things with your CPU than read files.

Limiting the filesystem bandwidth to 100MB/s or so (which, conveniently, happens to be how fast most mainstream MicroSD cards tend to be), means that you know that you would always have at least 75% CPU to play with, even if you were reading a file at the time.
 

kanewolf

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does it matter if the simple act of reading a file maxes out your CPU to 100%? Yes absolutely it does. Particularly when we're working with a RISC cpu with little in the way of multi-threading or multi-tasking optimisation. If the max the CPU can handle is 400MB/s, it makes little sense to read files that fast, since presumably you also want to do other things with your CPU than read files.

Limiting the filesystem bandwidth to 100MB/s or so (which, conveniently, happens to be how fast most mainstream MicroSD cards tend to be), means that you know that you would always have at least 75% CPU to play with, even if you were reading a file at the time.
You and I will just disagree.
 
Jun 8, 2021
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www.sshyper.com
HI,
Both the USB 3.0 and USB 3.1 variants of the StarTech 2.5″ SATA adapter work well with the Pi 4. I’ve used the 3.0 variant with my Pi 4 since launch and it has always worked well. I later bought the 3.1 variant and had the same positive experience. These two adapter variants are my go to adapters for all my Pi related projects that need a fast and easy 2.5″ SATA SSD

For solid state storage older models of solid state drives (SSDs) are also known to draw more power than their newer counterparts. If you have a drive that you think may fall into this category then definitely be on the lookout for power related issues and extra cautious about your power setup. High end “extreme” performance models also tend to draw more power

Note that a powered USB hub essentially bypasses these limits because the power for your peripherals such as your USB storage will come from the AC adapter connection to the powered USB hub instead of the Pi having to provide that power.
 
Sep 14, 2021
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yes actually a SSD can be quite a step up with OS read speed as the micro sd cards usually average around 42.8mb however using an M.2 SSD can take it up to over 300mb so depending on what OS you're using and the RAM of your sbc yes it does make a huge difference.