Moving from SD Card to SSD (open discussion)

Lolonois

@Retro-Arcade-Fan as you stated you have a arcade and a Rpi4. I assume space is not a premium, but you prefer a fanless cooling for you PI? Head over to this thread [1], if you did not already. In the thread there are also some fanless solutions.

The Argon extension with NVMe bus speed is a overkill IMHO, SATA3 bus is sufficient. There is also a SATA Argon case extension [2], which is even cheaper. And M.2 SATA3 SSD are also cheaper.

At the end of the day a decent USB to SATA adapter with UASP will do [3] as the RPI4 does not even yield the 600MB/s throughput of SATA3. [4]

Word of warning: Don't pick a USB to SATA adapter with JMicron chipset/firmware [5], those most likely do not support UASP properly. Which ruins the performance gain from the SSD and you have to use USB quirks to get it running [6]

While USB flash drives may be as reliable as an SSD they are in general slower (as they implement the bulk-only transfer, BOT), unless you search some up with UASP.

I left the boot (/boot) partition (less than 200MB) on the SD card and the root filesystem (/) on the SSD, as described there [7]. This way I don't had to change the boot order via raspi-config. You can also find a few recommendations for SSDs at the same site [8].

HTH

[1] https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/25913/good-cases-for-the-pi4
[2] https://www.argon40.com/products/argon-one-m-2-expansion-board
[3] https://retropie.org.uk/forum/post/274528
[4] https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/uasp-makes-raspberry-pi-4-disk-io-50-faster
[5] https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/27921/ssd-causing-lag
[6] https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=245931
[7] https://jamesachambers.com/raspberry-pi-4-usb-boot-config-guide-for-ssd-flash-drives/
[8] https://jamesachambers.com/2020s-fastest-raspberry-pi-4-storage-sd-ssd-benchmarks/

Retro Arcade Fan

@Lolonois wow, this is a lot of great information. Thank you for taking the time to break it all down. I did submit a separate post looking for some recommendations, but I will spend some time reading over what you have posted here.

Retro Arcade Fan

@Lolonois said in Moving from SD Card to SSD (open discussion):

I left the boot (/boot) partition (less than 200MB) on the SD card and the root filesystem (/) on the SSD, as described there [7]. This way I don't had to change the boot order via raspi-config

What is the benefit of this? Why not replace the sdcard entirely and only use the ssd?

WhiteT982

@Retro-Arcade-Fan
Lolonis probably just didn’t want to go through the process of updating the boot order. By default it boots from the SD but you can use the raspberry pi imager to change it to boot from usb first. Look through the first 8 steps here.

https://www.tomshardware.com/how-to/boot-raspberry-pi-4-usb

Lolonois

@Retro-Arcade-Fan I would have had to have the RPI firmware updated, which breaks the screen rotation on a very few emulators I am using (mainly those which do not use SDL2 or libretro). I need screen rotation as my display is mounted 180 degrees rotated and I can not mount otherwise due to space limitations. And last but not least: The 2GB SDcard was collecting dust anyways in my drawer. :) TL;DR: On a new build I would put everything on the SSD.

Retro Arcade Fan

@Lolonois

ok, so to confirm, I'd be better off with:

Then all I need to do is follow the steps at https://www.tomshardware.com/how-to/boot-raspberry-pi-4-usb to change the boot order and I should be good to go?

Am I missing anything?

Ashpool

@Retro-Arcade-Fan said in Moving from SD Card to SSD (open discussion):

Then all I need to do is follow the steps at https://www.tomshardware.com/how-to/boot-raspberry-pi-4-usb to change the boot order and I should be good to go?

Depends on what you want: As far as I understood it, it changes the boot order from SD over USB to USB over SD... so, without that steps applied and as long as no SD Card is inserted into the Pi, it should boot from the first USB device it finds with a boot partition (see Pi4 Boot Flow). AFAIK (and in my experience) USB Boot was factory enabled for all Pi4s from the first revision onward.

windg

The Pi PSU, will handle this case with the fan and extra board ?

Ashpool

@windg As neither my 4GB Pi4 [1], nor my Arcade-build of a 2GB Pi4 in an Argon Neo casing [2] are having any power problems, that shouldn't be problematic... unless that M2 Sata to USB adapter + the SSD is drawing more power then that. [Edit: I am running both systems with the official Pi4 PSU and no OC applied (and both machines are to old, no gain from arm_boost=1)]

1: Argon One casing (1st gen) and an external HDD (old Laptop 2.5" 300GB SATA + external USB 3.0 casing) with the Raspberry Pi OS running from the HDD.
2: with 2 2.5" SATA 128KB SSDs mounted in external USB 3.0 casings (mounted via fstab: one holds the home folder, the other one is for screenshots, videos and some other stuff) and running RetroPie from a 32GB SDCard [The Neo case is passive, no optional fan mounted].

Lolonois

@Retro-Arcade-Fan said in Moving from SD Card to SSD (open discussion):

@Lolonois

ok, so to confirm, I'd be better off with:

https://www.argon40.com/products/argon-one-m-2-case-for-raspberry-pi-4

https://www.argon40.com/products/argon-one-m-2-expansion-board?pr_prod_strat=use_description&pr_rec_id=1f9ec21bf&pr_rec_pid=6741901344833&pr_ref_pid=6740406796353&pr_seq=uniform

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08RK2SR23?ie=UTF8&psc=1&linkCode=sl1&tag=codemalletnative-20&linkId=a454c94eb44f3a13a85af4d423ba47e3&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl

Note: It looks to me that in 1.) the SATA extension is already included, so no need to buy also 2.)

Note: M.2 SSD only denotes the physical format (either "long" 2280, or "short" 2242). The second important factor is the bus protocol: This can be SATA, PCIe or NVMe. Thus: When picking a SATA (Argon case) the M.2 SSD must run SATA protocol. The SSD you suggested in 3.) won't work in the Argon SATA case. So either go with SATA M.2 SSD (Western Digital and Crucial are also fair picks) and accompanied Argon SATA case or with a NVMe M.2 SSD and an Argon NVMe case.

Then all I need to do is follow the steps at https://www.tomshardware.com/how-to/boot-raspberry-pi-4-usb to change the boot order and I should be good to go?

Am I missing anything?

I never used the procedure there but with retropie it would be in theory:

Get Retropie-Image from retropie.co.uk
Put on SD-card (as outlined in the Toms Hardware guide)
Install Pixel Desktop: https://retropie.org.uk/docs/FAQ/#where-did-the-desktop-go
Launch in to the GUI, then there should be this SD Card Copier.
That should be it.

Retro Arcade Fan

@Lolonois said in Moving from SD Card to SSD (open discussion):

SATA M.2 SSD

What's difficult, especially on Amazon is they throw in a lot of terms that don't always pertain to the actual product. I've seen SSD that say SATA, PCIe, M.2, and NVMe all on the same card.

Would this one work with the Argon sata case?

https://www.amazon.com/Blue-NAND-500GB-SSD-WDS500G2B0B/dp/B09ZYNHPW2/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1LA85XY5XLT0F&keywords=SATA%2BM.2%2BSSD&qid=1668373543&refinements=p_89%3ACrucial|Western%2BDigital%2Cp_n_feature_seven_browse-bin%3A23883466011&rnid=23883415011&s=pc&sprefix=sata%2Bm.2%2Bssd%2Celectronics%2C120&sr=1-1&ufe=app_do%3Aamzn1.fos.006c50ae-5d4c-4777-9bc0-4513d670b6bc&th=1

Lolonois

@Retro-Arcade-Fan I have seen the product number ‎WDS500G3B0B on the amazon page. This denotes the SATA variant. Verify also here: https://documents.westerndigital.com/content/dam/doc-library/en_us/assets/public/western-digital/product/internal-drives/wd-blue-ssd/product-brief-wd-blue-sa510-sata-ssd.pdf