How to Boot a Raspberry Pi From SSD and Use It for Permanent Storage
Both SSDs (solid-state drives) and SD cards use fundamentally similar flash storage technology to store data. However, SSDs offer faster controllers and more fault tolerance, making them much more reliable than SD cards. While most Raspberry Pis are still running on microSD cards, you may also use an external SSD to boot your Raspberry Pi.
Below, you’ll learn the steps to enable USB boot on Raspberry Pi, then use an external SSD as bootable media to boot Raspberry Pi OS and use the leftover space as permanent storage for your data.
Things You Will Need
You will need the following items to enable SSD boot on Raspberry Pi:
Boot Raspberry Pi 4 or 400 from SSD
Booting a Raspberry Pi from an SSD and using it for permanent storage can provide significant performance improvements and reliability over using a microSD card. To boot a Raspberry Pi 4 or Raspberry Pi 400 from SSD, you must enable USB boot by following these steps:
Boot Raspberry Pi 3 or Zero from SSD
To enable SSD boot on Raspberry Pi 3, Zero W, or Zero 2 W, you need to flash the standard Raspberry Pi OS on the microSD card, boot the Raspberry Pi, and make a few changes to the configuration files to enable USB (SSD) boot. The steps are as follows:
Learn more aboutways to edit the boot/config.txt file on Raspberry Pi.
Prepare Bootable Raspberry Pi SSD
To boot the Raspberry Pi Zero, Raspberry Pi 3, Raspberry Pi 4, or Raspberry Pi 400 via SSD, you must install an operating system such as Raspberry Pi OS on the SSD by using Raspberry Pi Imager (or the Balena Etcher tool).
In case you are already running an OS and services via microSD card, you can clone the SD card to the USB hard drive using Balena Etcher.
After writing or cloning the OS, you can connect the SSD to the Raspberry Pi via a USB port and run on the Raspberry Pi. The Pi will automatically detect a USB drive and boot the OS from the SSD. If USB storage is not detected, the Raspberry Pi will continue to boot from the microSD card (if connected).
To prepare the SSD for boot, follow these steps:
Using an SSD as Permanent Storage for Raspberry Pi
After booting the operating system from the external SSD drive, you can use the leftover space in the SSD as permanent storage to store other data.
To check the available storage space, run the following command in the Terminal app.
If you are using the Desktopversion of Raspberry Pi OS, openFile Managerand click onFilesystem Rootat the top of the screen. You can see the available storage in the bottom-right corner.
Expand the Filesystem
If you don’t see the full capacity of your SSD drive, you can follow these steps to expand the file system on Raspberry Pi.
Finally, use thersyncorcpcommand to move the data (migrate data) from the microSD card to your SSD. check that to connect the microSD card to the Raspberry Pi.
Now that you have faster SSD storage, it’s possible to use it tobuild a personal cloud storage accessible from anywhereor tohost a secure website on Raspberry Pi.
You may alsobuild a Raspberry Pi NASby installing Samba and use the SSD storage as network storage in your home or office network.
More Storage With Faster Performance
Booting your Raspberry Pi with an SSD is highly recommended as it is much faster and more reliable than a microSD card. You can use any external SSD available on the market. This includes M.2, SATA, and NVMe/PCIe SSDs.
While the process to enable boot is a bit complex on Raspberry Pi 3 and Raspberry Pi Zero W / 2 W, it’s much easier on Raspberry Pi 4 and Raspberry Pi 400.
Install WireGuard on Raspberry Pi to create your own VPN server to securely access the web and your home network remotely.
Free AI tools are legitimately powerful; you just need to know how to stack them.
Sometimes the smallest cleaning habit makes the biggest mess.
This small feature makes a massive difference.
Your phone is a better editor than you give it credit for.
Windows is great, but adding this makes it unstoppable.
