On 2019-01-09, Fred Smith  wrote:
> On 2019-01-08, A  Dumas  wrote:
>> Vince Coen wrote:
>>> Any one have any recommendations as my brain is hurting ?
>>
>> Simply get any 2.5" portable disk. It won't need external power. Make sure
>> you use the official RPi power adapter for the Pi, though.
>>
>
> Even then I'd be using an externally, separately powered disk. The
> pi simply does not have the grunt to run "any 2.5" portable disk"
> reliably. You are asking for all sorts of obscure problems that
> will ruin your day.

My experience is different. I have 2 pi's, an RPI 3 and an RPI 1B+ running
each with USB 2.5in HDD attached, powered from the RPIs. The rpi3 is a
server and runs 24/7 and has for over a year. The B+ is a backup server
which is switched on and off for backups by the RPI3. Neither has given me
problems.

I have tried to run 2 USB HDDs from one Pi and had problems booting. But
not investigated if it was an insufficient power supply or just the RPI
not being able to deliver sufficient power via the USB ports.

My Pi's each have an SD card for the boot stuff, but the root filesystem
is on the USB Hard drives. The SD cards boot partitions are mounted
Readonly, so on a power fail they won't corrupt. Does mean you have to
remember to re-mount r/w when you need to upgrade or change bootparams
etc.

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