Quick question on storage devices.

[oak tangle]

So I've been running Home Assistant on a Raspberry Pi 4b for a while. When I had first set it up, I made Home Assistant OS install to a Kingston SSD, and it runs off that. My Pi no longer has a MicroSD card in it since it always boots off the SSD.

I was wondering if it's possible to use that MicroSD card slot now as another storage device? I was thinking of sticking a spare 64GB one I have lying around in, and saving my backups into that MicroSD card as well?

Would Home Assistant OS recognize the MicroSD card as a storage device, is there anything I'd have to do, or would that just not work at all?

[onyx depot]

I don't think this is something that is supported. this is not to say that its impossible but I would not recommend it, and it wouldn't directly work with the backup system... just ensure you have backups stored somewhere using the backup system and have the key ready in case you need it.

[oak tangle]

alright, thanks! I recently installed Syncthing to my Home Assistant after using it on my main Linux machine, spare Windows PC, and my phone as I was looking to get away from some cloud services.

So I suppose I'll just have Syncthing clone the backups to the drives on my other hardware then

[onyx depot]

you can mount a smb or nfs share directly in HAOS and use that as a backup target if you prefer

in settings - system - storage you can mount the share

[oak tangle]

oh I never even saw that, didn't know it was built in

[onyx depot]

the share then shows up in the backup location opotions

do remember if you have encryption on for the backups to keep your key somewhere safe. you can download the "emergancy kit" text file from the backup settings which has the key and some other info

[oak tangle]

I'll have to check it out, I don't have any actual NAS yet, just file synchronization through Syncthing.

I've been trying to do my research before getting into a NAS, quite a bit of info and looks like all the good quality (or at least most well known names) are somewhat expensive lol

[onyx depot]

personally i recommend something custom for a NAS, the off the shelf ones are a nightmare if stuff goes even slightly wrong

[oak tangle]

yeah I got the keys stored on a USB and I have a small 8GB MicroSD card locked in a file cabinet that has nothing but those keys on it, lol

[oak tangle]

so just build a micro ITX PC or something along those lines?

[onyx depot]

yeah, theres some nice itx nas style cases about that make it easy

i have my stuff i a rack so its all rack mounted but thats not for everyonee

[oak tangle]

or I can apparently 3D print my own case from what I see online

those seem kinda neat tbh

[onyx depot]

just remember to power it up every few months. flash can corrupt/go blank if its not powered up every so often

[onyx depot]

oh yeah i have seen those, they can be cool

[oak tangle]

I'd love a small rack but man somehow even a small 10 slot one in Canada is pricey

[oak tangle]

yup, that I do. I also forgot to mention the last place I have the keys saved is on a LUKS encrypted hard drive in my Linux PC

[onyx depot]

the 10" mini rack stuff is getting better price wise but its going to have an inital cost yeah

[oak tangle]

I'll 3D print the rack too

lol

[onyx depot]

its very doable

although how solid it is might be questionable if you put a few things in it

i have a 12u 19" big boy rack in the cupboard under the stairs 🙂

[oak tangle]

yeah, I'd probably have to put some wood dowels into certain spots to make it rigid between layer lines, and also not use PLA since that gets squishy at around 50C

[oak tangle]

if only it wasn't so expensive... I'd do it all

[onyx depot]

you can buy just the metal vertical rails and fit them onto some wood and stuff.

[oak tangle]

yeah, I'll probably get crafty with it

[onyx depot]

https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2025/running-lamp-stack-lamp-rack

this was a bit of a joke but it gives an idea of attaching the vert rails to a wooden frame

[oak tangle]

oh my god I have basically that exact same lamp in my basement already....

[onyx depot]

10" stuff is pretty nice with a 3d printer cos you can make custom mounts for anything you want in there

[oak tangle]

yeah that's what I saw online

[onyx depot]

although if you were going to put a load of stuff in then the investment in a rack from geekpi might end up being better

or is it deskpi i cant remember

[oak tangle]

I don't have too much, just a few TP link smart ethernet switches

[onyx depot]

something to think about and research in any case

[oak tangle]

Funny you should mention since I just did this 2 days ago...

their deskpi pro case and attachments, lol

[onyx depot]

ah thats quite smart

although by the time you get a rpi/case/hat/ssd you might as well get an n100 mini pc these days

[oak tangle]

the SSD was hanging out by a SATA to USB cable and I really didn't like that, so I ended up just getting this to make it internal

[oak tangle]

if the pi wasn't already running home assistant for a year, I probably would've

but yeah, thanks for letting me know it'd be better to just build a micro itx PC for a NAS. Definitely gives me a few hardware ideas now

and the modularity of a normal PC is probably a better idea anyways rather than an enclosed system

the one thing I have yet to really solve though is what exactly to do about backing up the NAS...

so many mixed answers online

cause with OneDrive, if they have an issue, they fix it, you don't even really realize

but if one of my hard drives were to go, what would be some good ways to be able to recover anything?

[onyx depot]

what kind of storage capacity are you considering? and how much of absolutly must be backed up

[onyx depot]

if you use a correct raid configuration you can be hardened against single disk failures

[oak tangle]

well really I'm just looking to replace OneDrive as I've not been a fan of Microsoft the past few years now...

My OneDrive is only about 2TB, family plan that splits between us. So maybe 6TB minimum to replace it completely

as for info on it, it'd mostly be stuff like all our family photos, maybe a few personal documents

[onyx depot]

for smaller capaccity then going full ssd is a potential option?

[oak tangle]

what would also be nice is I wanted to get into cloning me and my brothers old games from the Xbox 360's and such to create digital backups

[onyx depot]

but for critical data i mean

[oak tangle]

yeah for just the personal stuff and photos maybe

[onyx depot]

you could have a small 2nd backup system with 2 ssds in raid for some durability

[oak tangle]

perhaps set up some kinda routine every 2 days or so to clone all the personal data to an SSD and then unmount that SSD after the routine is done?

[onyx depot]

theres a million ways of doing stuff like this

[oak tangle]

guess it's just figuring out whatever feels best for me then, huh?

[onyx depot]

yeah exactly. get to a level where you are happy

its one of those things where you research peoples solutions for ideas then constuct your own, instead of just copying one usually

[oak tangle]

alright, thanks a ton. Sorry I ended up dragging the original question into a whole other discussion lol, sometimes tho it's better to just ask a person with experience over reading a thousand articles with different answers

[onyx depot]

its fine, happy to help point you towards things to research

[oak tangle]

definitely given me a lot to think about though, so I'm gonna have to start planning all that out

[onyx depot]

sometimes a question is best answered with "why are you doing this in the first place"

https://xyproblem.info/ 🙂

solve the reason for the question instead of the question

[oak tangle]

that's a really funny website and I'm saving it now lmao

[onyx depot]

yup, that does get linked a fair amount around here to be honest

[oak tangle]

I love how I've basically told this to some people before and yet I never follow my own advice sometimes

good old human brain 👍

[onyx depot]

its easy to get stuck in a rabbit hole when you dont know exactly what your looking for

[oak tangle]

yeah

[onyx depot]

if everyone included both x and y alot more stuff would get quick answers i bet

[oak tangle]

probably would, lmao

welp, I'm gonna mark the post as solved and close it up now as it is 1am for me. Thanks a ton for all the help!