Beginners • Transitioning from USB Drive to HDD for OS

Hey there,

I am working with a raspberry pi 4B 4GB model. I have been booting from a sandisk cruzer blade 16GB usb thumb drive ever since the sd card I used previously stopped responding. I have now noticed that the thumb drive is slowing down, and the raspberry pi os sd card speed tool is reporting that the read and writes are too slow. I am worried that the drive will die and I will have to reconfigure my system.

Test : SD Card Speed Test
Run 1
prepare-file;0;0;11341;22
seq-write;0;0;8463;2
seq-read;36725;8;0;0
rand-4k-write;0;0;1627;406
rand-4k-read;4089;1022;0;0
Sequential write speed 8463 KB/sec (target 10000) - FAIL
Note that sequential write speed declines over time as a card is used - your card may require reformatting
Random write speed 406 IOPS (target 500) - FAIL
Random read speed 1022 IOPS (target 1500) - FAIL

My setup includes a 4 TB WD red NAS HDD connected via usb in a drive enclosure. I am wondering if I can set up the system on this. That drive currently has 2 EXT4 partitions with about 50 GB data (previous network speed issues prevented me from making much use of it) which i can migrate somewhere else. I don't mind the slower boot speeds, as long as the system is overall decently responsive. Is it possible to make a create a partition (eg 64 GB) for boot, and use the rest for storage? I haven't tested, but I think that the image flashing tool RUFUS that I have been using will require me to flash the whole drive, rather than being able to select a partition to use for the OS.

- I would like to transfer the current system I have to the HDD, and I am wondering if this is possible and using the HDD is a decent idea, or if I should just bite the bullet, install fresh, and reconfigure everything.
- Secondly, if I install to the HDD will I be able to dedicate only part of the capacity to the OS and use the rest for NAS.

Statistics: Posted by stinkbug11 — Mon Jan 06, 2025 4:55 pm — Replies 1 — Views 22

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