A Raspberry Pi needs an operating system to run. However, there is no need to find downloads and spend hours installing it.
Thanks to the Raspberry Imager tool, you simply select the operating system of your choice, and specify a drive to install it on.
Aside from classic operating systems, you can also install specialized operating systems such as Home Assistant OS.
Selecting Drive Type
Raspberry Pi can use almost any drive to boot from. Here are two popular choices:
- SSD: A solid-state disk drive is a great choice to install an operating system on. SSDs are cheap, very fast, and provide almost unlimited storage.
- SD-Card: SD-Cards are also cheap and provide fairly large storage capacities, however they are much slower than SSD. They can still be a great option for installing environments that you may need only temporarily.
The steps below are identical for both drive types.
Temporary USB Access For SSD
If you opt for a SSD, you need a way to temporarily mount the SSD so you can use it like a USB drive.
That’s required because when you transfer the operating system to the drive, you are going to use a regular PC or Apple computer. So you need a way to temporarily access the SSD from it. Plugging it into the computer as a USB drive is the easiest way.
For SD-Cards, you just need a SD Card Reader. Many computers have them built-in (search for an appropriate slot). Else, get yourself a cheap USB SD Card reader.
The image shows how the pins of the SSD drive align with the pins of the USB adapter:
To mount the SSD drive to the adapter, firmly press the SSD drive towards the contacts on the adapter. Always make sure the pins align.
Once the SSD drive pins snap into place, do not be surprised to see the SSD drive tilt upwards.
Gently move the SSD drive downwards until the screw holes at the end of both SSD drive and adapter align. Fix them with the screw that came with the adapter.
Preparing Drive
Since this Raspberry Pi 5 is intended to become a HomeAssistant server, next you should download and install all necessary software on the SSD drive. This is done on your regular PC.
For this you need your SSD drive and the USB adapter.
Raspberry Pi Imager
The actual pre-loading is done by Raspberry Pi Imager. The tool is available for Windows, macOS, and Ubuntu.
Once you installed and opened Raspberry Pi Imager, you can choose what software you want to preload onto the SSD drive.
Picking Operating System
Since Raspberry Pi 5 is going to be HomeAssistant server in this example, the choices are Raspberry Pi 5, Home Assistant OS, and the storage device that represents the mounted SSD drive.
To select Home Assistant as Operating System, click on the combo box and select Other specific-purpose OS, then Home assistants and home automation, and finally Home Assistant, and the version you want.
Once you click Next, you see a number of warnings that all data on the selected storage device will be deleted. Once you proceed, the tool starts to write the requested image to disk.
Once this is done, unmount the SSD drive from the USB adapter.
Adding SSD To Raspberry
To add the SSD drive to the Raspberry Pi, you need the *M.2 Shield for Raspberry Pi which looks fairly similar to the USB adapter you just used. The board is slightly bigger and has three mounting holes.
When you unpack the shield, make sure you identify a small ribbon cable that comes with it.
Mounting Ribbon Cable
In a first step, connect the ribbon cable to the shield. The connector on the shield has a plastic lock that can be turned up (unlock) and down (lock).
Turn it up, then place one side of the ribbon cable into the connector, and secure the cable by turning the plastic lock down.
Next, place the SSD drive with its contacts into the matching connector, and push it in. This procedure is identical to previously mounting the SSD drive to the USB adapter.
In fact, the SSD drive will again tilt upwards until you push it gently down and secure its end with a screw.
Mounting Spacer Bolts
In order to mount the M.2 Shield to the Raspberry Pi 5, you need to first add three spacer bolts to the board. The bolts come with the metal housing. One of the mounting holes remains untouched for now:
Do not use the black screws to secure the bolts to the board. Use the smaller bolts that came with the metal housing. They serve as feet and are required to later mount the board to the metal housing.
Mounting M.2 Shield
Now you can place the M.2 Shield on top of the spacer bolts and screw it to the Raspberry Pi 5.
The final step is connecting the ribbon cable to the connector on the Raspberry Pi 5 board. This is a bit fiddly but the connector works similar to the other one and has a plastic lock. Pull it up to unlock the connector, and press it back into place to secure the cable.
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(content created May 31, 2024 - last updated Jul 07, 2024)