Hi, I’m looking for SBCs where I can run the OS on one storage device, and the applications on another. I believe a couple of Khadas boards have such features, but they also have some other peripherals that I don’t need. I want something like a LibreComputing potato but with the capability to have 2 storage devices (not through USB please, it had proven to be unreliable). I plan to use this as an IOT/Network infrastructure server (Pi-Hole, Unbound, VPN etc).
Any suggestions?
You’d be better off with something that has an EMMC slot (or ideally SATA connection). Running the OS off of an SD card is painfully slow. I’ve also found USB storage to be way more reliable than SD cards, in general. I used an external 4-bay drive connected via usb3 for years and never had issues. Burned through many SD cards over the same period.
Hi, do you suggest a USB drive (the small ones from Samsung/Sandisk) as primary/secondary storage? Should I run the OS on it too?
Actually, at this point I might even consider running a mini PC with 3 slots for storage drives (2 SATA + 1 NVME/2 NVME + 1 SATA, etc). Know anything I can use?
The mini PC is your best bet. I only have ARM SBCs but they have a lot of limitations. If I needed something new it would likely be a used mini PC. I dont have any suggestions unfortunately. I saw something posted a couple weeks ago that was some university surplus- $30 used mini PC’s, including the case- which will run circles around any ARM SBC. I think shipping was another $30 but still a great deal. Find something like that.
Thanks, I’m looking at Lenovo and Dell mini PCs, they look nice.
Cheers