Migrating Home Assistant from SD card to SSD on a raspberry pi 4

By CLN Posted on 09/09/202219/01/2023 Category :

Moving an SD card install to SSD for Home Assistant on a raspberry pi 4

Steps to take

Updating the Raspberry PI 4’s bootloader to the latest version
Flashing Home Assistant Operating System to the SSD
Making a complete system backup
Removing the SD card from the PI
Adding the SSD to the PI
Rebooting the PI
Restoring the backup

On this page

Before we start: Make sure you have a working adapter for your SSD to USB

Please visit James A. Chambers’s resource for a crowdsourced list of adapters that work!

Updating the bootloader from an SD card (no OS required) with the Raspberry Pi Imager

You don’t need to run a full OS to update the bootloader, it can be done by putting an SD card in with the latest bootloader, follow my guide here on how to do that!

Making a full backup of home assistant

Head over to “Settings > System > Backups > Create Backup”

create a full backup, depending on how big your home assistant is, it could take a while

locate the backup in the list and download it.

Flashing Home Assistant onto the SSD

Head over to home assistant and download the raspberry pi (64 bit) image

I suggest to browse to the URL and download the image directly as opposed to copy paste it into Belena Etcher

Head over to Belena Etcher and download your OS’s version, install & run it

Select flash from the file and grab the OS we just downloaded

Booting from the SSD & restoring a backup

Make sure your bootloader of the RPI is up to date! (my guide on how to do this here)

Plug in the SSD (pick the blue USB ports) they are USB 3 as opposed to USB 2.
Power up the PI and wait a couple of minutes for it to boot / unpack / install HassOS / Hass.io / Home Assistant Operating System

Connect to the fresh install of home assistant, depending on how you have it set up, in my case I have DHCP reservations on the MAC Address of my Raspberry Pi