Raspberry Pi Smraza Case to 2.5" SSD Adapter
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I love this case! https://www.amazon.com/Smraza-Raspberry-Acrylic-Heatsinks-Included/dp/B07TSMSCCF/ For what I'm using it for, which is basically a timelapse camera for my Miracle Gro Twelve system (PLANTS!), it's perfect! What's the biggest problem with the Raspberry Pi 4? Well, besides an inability to boot directly off of the SSD, it's the fact that the MicroSD card slot is SO SLOW regardless of the card you use. Upgrading to a USB 3.0 (yay USB 3.0!) SATA adapter and connecting an SSD (even a relatively cheap one) is going to give you crazy speed. Mine was 6x faster! But now you've got this case, and a cable, and the SSD itself. It's not that it looks ugly - it looks cool! (see picture) - but there's no real easy way to connect the two. I mean, you could use tape, but if it's strong enough to hold them together, it might leave a residue over the long haul. Annoying to clean, especially on electronics. Velcro has the same issue (adhesive residue). So I decided to design something to hitch them together well, with the option to easily and quickly take them apart without any adhesive! (I just replaced an Apple MacBook battery and had to fight adhesive with fishing line for hours, so I may have adhesive PTSD at this point.) First design was...suboptimal. Basically little brackets for each side. They fit, sorta, but they also fell off, and I was starting to feel the need to use double-sided tape. I thought about the case itself, and it's made of a really nice plastic, but I don't think it would enjoy tape long-term. So I slept on it, and decided to make it shaped like a license plate cover, and connect the "brackets" along the top and bottom. If you print two, they should fit perfectly on each end, and look pretty good. This design, with this case, and the SSD that I'm using (all 2.5" SSDs should have the same form factor), none of the connectors are covered or obscured. The case itself has some screws on the bottom, and the last iteration of the design that worked had a perfect "tab" that fit between the SSD and the screw on all four sides. I hope other folks find this Thing to be useful, and will make different versions for different cases. Also, if you want to learn more about benchmarking SSDs on Raspberry Pi, how to boot from the MicroSD (slow) into the /root on an SSD (fast), check out these links: https://jamesachambers.com/raspberry-pi-storage-benchmarks-2019-benchmarking-script https://jamesachambers.com/raspberry-pi-4-usb-boot-config-guide-for-ssd-flash-drives Had a lot of fun making this. Let me know in the comments if you'd like me to make you a custom version to fit your case/drive.
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