January 22, 2022

Upgrade: Boot off SSD covid-19: day 665 | US: GA | info | act

My media server has been updated to a new case with a 240 GB SSD which it boots from. Thanks to this easy tutorial, I was able to make it all happen in fifteen minutes or so. I don’t really notice any speed increase since the Raspberry Pi runs headless, but the SSD should increase the reliability of the little powerhouse. I purchased the Argon ONE M.2 case and a Kensington 240 GB SSD. It works so well, this is probably the setup I’ll use to make Henry a RetroPie for his next birthday—if I can ever get a Raspberry Pi again.

I’ve been thinking about picking up a used mini or micro PC, like these from Dell, HP, and Lenovo, that I can upgrade and tweak to run Proxmox. I don’t really have an application for it, but it would be cool to set up and play with—and learning to cluster would be super cool, but that might be a bit too much in my limited space. I think having an x86 machine would be beneficial anyway to run headless in my upgraded server cabinet. Oh, the cabinet now has a wire shelf in it that gives me much more flexibility in the tiny space. I’m not sure what took me so long to get a bit of shelving. Anyway, I poked around eBay, and these tiny PCs can be had for pretty cheap, even with an i5. The only drawback is that I will probably have to have some kind of monitor to set the machine up.

Regardless, the homelab is in good shape. Now if I could just find time to set up my mini router, the network would be complete.