James A. Chambers

I don’t see a link, so here’s the post I used: https://jamesachambers.com/new-raspberry-pi-4-bootloader-usb-network-b… Make sure you use the right adapter, I got an enclosure at first that wasn’t on the list, and it ended up not working. I switched to the recommended StarTech 2.5″ and everything worked.

Basically this list of known working adapters is your best bet: https://jamesachambers.com/raspberry-pi-4-usb-boot-config-guide-for-ss… You can technically just disable UAS like you said, but you'll likely lose some drive performance. But if filesystem corruption is a concern then you're probably safer disabling it.

I stumbled on that second link awhile ago when I was curious about the best SD card for Raspberrys. There's a newer post now: https://jamesachambers.com/raspberry-pi-storage-benchmarks-2019-benchm… At first I thought the recommendation to use an SSD with a Raspberry was crazy, but the benchmarks do indeed show an improvement. And, as that article points out, since the SSD's performance isn't important (hitting the USB 2.0 limit) you can grab the cheapest, decent SSD which ... comes in at just $20! Though I still like SD cards for the form factor. There's the newer A1 class SD cards with better minimum IOPS, which I'd be totally fine with. But reliability is still such a big issue with SD cards. I had one die a few days ago; always annoying.

Regarding microSD card reliability, one option would be to simply forego the microSD card completely and boot the Raspberry Pi 4 via an SSD connected to one of the Raspberry Pi’s USB 3.0 ports. I was originally going to recommend checking out this¹ article for instructions on how to do it. However, much of the instructions are no longer valid (as of two weeks ago!) since they assume that the Raspberry Pi 4 doesn’t natively support booting from USB, which finally isn’t the case (although only if you use the current beta bootloader²). I’d still recommend reading it though, as it also mentions known working 2.5″ SATA to USB 3.0, M.2 NVMe to USB 3.0, M.2 SATA to USB 3.0, and mSATA to USB 3.0 adapters. In addition, I’d recommend checking out this³ article with some recommended SSDs; in particular, this⁴ 120 GB Kingston A400 SATA 3 2.5” Solid State Drive coupled with this⁵ StarTech 2.5″ SATA to USB 3.0 Adapter, which also has the added bonus of giving you far better speeds than a microSD card would! As the author of that article mentions: “The Kingston A400 drive performs really well in the Raspberry Pi Storage Benchmarks⁶. It’s a great drive and is cheaper than many mid-range MicroSD cards. The 2.5″ SATA to USB adapter above allows us to do this. There is no power adapter needed as SSDs are low power and are powered by the Pi through USB.” ―――――― ¹ — https://jamesachambers.com/raspberry-pi-4-usb-boot-config-guide-for-ss… ² —…

I've been running this[0] for a few years now, moved it a couple of days ago to a portainer VM on proxmox with 6GB ram, its running perfectly fine for 3 of us, and works fine from tablets and PC. Can also run on the nintendo switch if you setup a cname to redirect to your server IP, i.e: mco.lbsg.net x.x.x.x play.lbsg.net x.x.x.x Then choose the "Lifeboat" server [0] https://jamesachambers.com/minecraft-java-bedrock-server-together-geys…

If the relative reliability of the SD card is an underlying cause (e.g. tons of writes wearing them out early causing corruption) you might also consider eMMC chips on SD card adapters. A discussion here: https://jamesachambers.com/emmc-to-sd-card-adapters-explained/

I have lot of problem with adaptater Usb <-> Sata and uas actually ... even with 'compatible' adaptaters from this page : https://jamesachambers.com/raspberry-pi-4-usb-boot-config-guide-for-ss… I'm confronted to kernel bug : https://github.com/raspberrypi/linux/issues/4490

I found what i was looking for at https://jamesachambers.com/raspberry-pi-storage-benchmarks-2019-benchm…

Curios how the benchmark compares when adding SSD on RPI 4? https://jamesachambers.com/raspberry-pi-4-usb-boot-config-guide-for-ss… I don't think it beats anything, but I am sure IO improves fairly significantly. One of the things I found to be a problem is that most container images found on different registries are built for x86_64. You would need to rebuild those containers yourself on the RPI.

A big performance increase by putting the OS on a SSD. The read/write speed is much better than using the SD card. It takes a little tweaking to get the SSD to boot on the rpi 4, but can be done. Basically the SD card gets used a bootloader. howto: https://jamesachambers.com/raspberry-pi-4-usb-boot-config-guide-for-ss…

There are already builds of Ubuntu 64bit that are very solid... https://jamesachambers.com/raspberry-pi-4-ubuntu-server-desktop-18-04-…

You can use micro sd card for the bootloader and boot from USB 3 ssd on rpi4. https://jamesachambers.com/raspberry-pi-4-usb-boot-config-guide-for-ss…

Why SD card when USB boot is available for Raspberry Pi 3BX& RPi 2B v1.2[1]. SD cards are the abomination of single board computers, I understand that it is a choice taken to limit cost and I'm grateful for that but SD cards are not designed to run OS. One might argue that USB 2.0 interface of RPi doesn't add much value when a USB SSD is connected to it, but benchmarks show that it adds at-least double the performance[2]. [1]:https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberrypi/bootmod… [2]:https://jamesachambers.com/raspberry-pi-storage-benchmarks/

> has a proper M.2 slot and at least 16GB of RAM... Orange Pi 5 16GB RK3588S (8 Core 64 Bit, 2.4GHz Frequency), PCIE Module External WiFi+BT,SSD Gigabit Ethernet Single Board Computer,Run Android Debian OS (M.2 PCIe2.0!) https://www.aliexpress.com/store/group/OPI-5/1553371_40000002877445.ht… ( via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33739176 ) Review: """ "Orange Pi 5 Review – Powerful, No WiFi" https://jamesachambers.com/orange-pi-5-review/ Pros: - 4 GB and 8 GB RAM variants cost under $100 - M.2 slot supports high speed NVMe storage - RAM options from 4 GB all the way up to 32 GB available Cons - No WiFi or Bluetooth included (requires either adapter for the M.2 slot or a USB adapter to get WiFi/Bluetooth capabilities) - No eMMC option - PCIe speeds are limited to 500MB/s (PCIe 2.0, benchmarks show closer to 250MB/s write or PCIe 1.0 performance) — this is slower than SATA3 """

Yes, a Raspberry is a viable option. These days I do most of my computing on a Raspberry Pi 4 attached to my home router: https://fatcity.it/ One thing you really need is an SSD, though. I use a cheap Kingston, it works great but you must pay attention to the right USB->SATA adapter, picking one that's fully compatible with UAS drivers. For booting directly from the SSD with Ubuntu there is this useful guide: https://jamesachambers.com/raspberry-pi-4-ubuntu-20-04-usb-mass-storag… Performance wise, this little computer runs mostly like a common VPS, I think on par with a droplet from Digital Ocean, for example. Here some benchmarks: https://pibenchmarks.com/benchmark/62022/ If you don't want to share your IP, a Cloudflare tunnel is a great alternative: https://developers.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-one/connections/connect-a… Also, another essential tool is Tailscale, with it I can access my home server from basically everywhere just like a LAN connected device: https://tailscale.com/ PS: You can also do your own tunnelling with OSS alternatives, if you have enough patience/time. Anyway, feel free to ask anything.