Hello, it’s me again. I read a lot about how unreliable micro SD cards are if you use your RPi to selfhost some stuff. Now I wanted to ask if some of you might have recommendations for cheap but reliable external SSDs. I did some research on Amazon but there are some brands I never heard before (Intenso, SSK, Netac, etc.) and don’t know if they can be trusted.

  • EngywuckEnglish
    11•3 months ago

    I’m using a couple of cheap Kingston A400 for my setup (120 and 480 GB) and they work just fine. One thing I noticed is that the 120 GB one’s health went down to 92%, from 100%, in “just” one year (smart parameter). But that’s implies a lifetime of more that 12 years, so I’m not excessively concerned.

    EDIT: of course, just after writing this comment the smaller SSD began to behave strangely (errors in dmesg).

        • @[email protected]OPEnglish
          1•3 months ago

          Thank you, I think I will go with this and a SSD from crucial to start off and then add some HDDs for backup and NAS. Do you think this kind of enclosure is reliable enough for a NAS? And is there enough airflow if you add two 3.5" HDDs together in the dock station?

        • EngywuckEnglish
          0•3 months ago

          Yeah, I use something like this, a no-brand enclosure.

      • @[email protected]English
        2•3 months ago

        I’m not 100% sure but this might also depend which OS you are running on your pi. Did change from SD card to SSD few years back for my home assistant setup (now running with a mini pc) at the time I went for a geekpi adapter (can’t recall exact model).

        Try a quick ducduck search “sata adapter #yourOS#” and see if a list come up. Here is one for HA (but surely more models are compatible than the ones listed here) https://community.home-assistant.io/t/working-usb-enclosures-and-adapters-with-hassos/212763

        Edit: as for SSD, I went for Samsung EVO model

        Sidenote: all SSD will be more reliable than a sd card because they are less sensitive to rewrite counts

      • EngywuckEnglish
        1•3 months ago

        I have a couple of no-brand SATA-USB enclosers with some jmicron chipset. Can’t remember the exact chipset right now, as my RPi is not working ATM (see edit).

    • FarraigePlaisteachEnglish
      2•3 months ago

      Is there a one-line command to check my SSD? I have a headless setup. When I’ve tried on the past there was more results coming back than I knew what to do with.