Selecting a hard drive for a Pi4

In message , Theo writes

If by the poster your are referring to me (rather than the OP), then as I've pointed out elsewhere in the thread, it was using an adapter (and the SSD was a SATA drive).

Adrian

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Adrian
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Investigation done.

Last night 2:49 am

over-current under-voltage USB Disconnecting Unmounting /mnt/hdd...

So crap USB power. I suppose using an integral USB wall power socket wasn't a great idea for one rpi let alone 2.

I have 3 rpi plus an extra USB for HDD power. So I need a multiple USB

Reply to
Pancho

Use recommended power supply and USB SSD

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Chris Elvidge, England
Reply to
Chris Elvidge

You might want to consider what I do when I put a Raspberry Pi on a 3D printer: power it through the +5V and GND GPIO pins from a buck converter adjusted to 5.2V, which in turn runs off the printer's 12V supply. 12V power supplies are pretty cheap, such as this 360W model for $19:

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These buck converters are $18 for 10:

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A few minutes' crimping and soldering and your Beowulf cluster of RPis is running rock-solid. I never see power errors on mine when they're set up this way.

_/_ / v \ Scott Alfter (remove the obvious to send mail) (IIGS(

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Top-posting! \_^_/ >What's the most annoying thing on Usenet?

Reply to
Scott Alfter

Cool post!

I'd never heard of buck convertors before, I had used a voltage regulator in the past.

I'm not going to do the rPi stuff you suggest, due to wanting a neat cupboard, and the rpi is now happily running off an old phone usb charger, but a buck convertor is exactly what I want for my garage door opener to wifi switch.

I like the name Beowulf cluster too. Although that isn't what I have. Mine is more historical. I had two rpi3s to run different services on. I now have an rpi4 4GB which has enough memory to replace both the rpi3s. I just haven't got around to sorting it all out.

Reply to
Pancho

'Buck converters' are a silly American name for DC input switched mode power supplies that don't use a transformer - just a choke. Essentially an L-C circuit is charged up by a variable width HF pulse, at high voltage low current, and becomes available as a lower voltage higher current output from the capacitor. You can even build them backwards to increase voltage from a low voltage source.

A cheap source of them is the model RC world where electric flight batteries need converting to 5V to power the avionics,

Here they are known as SBECS (switching battery elimination circuits)

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The Natural Philosopher

In message , Theo writes

What do the panel think about this combo ?

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76q1t0bw

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(other suppliers are available)

Adrian

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Adrian

mz-

sata-iii-

eBuyer prices are reasonable (I just bought a Dlink wifi presence box + a couple of SDs from them - identical price to Amazon - the only drawback is that they use Yodel for delivery, who delivered half the order and came back a few hours later with the other half).

I've used Startech enclosures on the past for 2,5" HDDs (120-320 GB) drives. Had no problems.

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Reply to
Martin Gregorie

QLC SSDs are at the cheap and slow end of the spectrum (for SSDs), but this isn't a taxing application for an SSD so should be fine. Startech stuff is usually good so I wouldn't have too many worries about the enclosure.

Theo

Reply to
Theo

I think the OP means WD Elements. There is also WD Easystore which I think is a brand specific to Best Buy. These are 3.5" drives.

MyPassport is their range of 2.5" drives. Some of the larger sizes are SMR, if that matters to you, although I'm not sure if the 2TB is affected.

Theo

Reply to
Theo

First of all, thanks to everybody who shared their thoughts and experiences!

It looks to me as if most anything I get will work decently, at least.

Drives packaged for USB connection are apt to be intended for backup use, which makes it more likely they'll use shingled magnetic recording. There doesn't appear to be an easy way to check for and exclude SMR drives.

It's tempting to think that a freestanding SATA drive in a USB enclosure gives me a slightly better window on what sort of drive is being offered. Not perfect, but better. That's a big haystack to search, but worth at least some effort. I'd really prefer a drive intended to boot a workstation or laptop, not one intended for backup use.

Thanks for reading!

bob prohaska

Reply to
bob prohaska

It'll probably be fine, but there is a chance, probably more so if you use very cheap or obscure USB-SATA adapters, that you will get bad performance:

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That would be why I'd pick a well-known pre-packaged solution. SMR is bad and I wouldn't want it either but on the other hand I don't think you'll notice a performance difference with a Pi on USB. And if it's for a Pi4, I would definitely go SSD because you *will* notice a big difference on USB3.

Reply to
A. Dumas

In message , Adrian writes

The above have been purchased, and I had a fun afternoon yesterday getting the disk partitioned and formatted, and then transferring data on to it. So far all seems well.

Thanks for the assistance.

Adrian

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Adrian

Looks like I might have blown it. I ended up getting a Sabrent EC-UASP adapter:

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along with this Seagate 1TB drive:

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and a powered hub:

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The adapter appears to be exactly what you were trying to warn me about 8-( I'd had good experience with Sabrent in the past, and didn't check first.

However, the combination seems to work and boot RaspiOS Buster on a Pi3. It also appears to work with FreeBSD. I haven't yet gone through the blacklisting tests described in the Raspberry Pi forum article.

I also note there's a firmware update download for the adapter, but it seems to require a Windows PC to run, which I don't have.

My bad.....at least it seems to work with USB2.0

Thanks for reading,

bob prohaska

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bob prohaska

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