Using an SSD for your Raspberry Pi offers many advantages over a standard microSD card. To enable it, just follow our step-by-step instructions.
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.
In this guide, you will 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.
You will need the following items to enable SSD boot on Raspberry Pi.
To boot Raspberry Pi 4 or Raspberry Pi 400 from SSD, you must enable USB boot by following these steps:
To enable SSD boot on Raspberry Pi 3 or Zero W/2W, 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:
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). After writing the OS, you can connect the SSD to the Raspberry Pi via a USB port and boot the OS from the SSD.
To prepare the SSD for boot, follow these steps:
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 Desktop version of Raspberry Pi OS, open File Manager and click on Filesystem Root at the top of the screen. You can see the available storage in the bottom-right corner.
Now that you have faster SSD storage, you can use it to build your own personal cloud storage accessible from anywhere or to host a secure website on Raspberry Pi.
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/2W, it’s much easier on Raspberry Pi 4 and Raspberry Pi 400.
Ravi is an expert tech explainer, an IoT enthusiast and Linux lover with a background in big data and app development. He spends most of his weekends working with IoT devices and playing games on the Xbox. He is also a solo traveler who loves hiking and exploring new trails.
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