Option 5: Use a tool that enables you to quickly and easily recreate/rebuild your system, albeit with a bit of upfront work. I've been using such a tool since Buster, as have several other forum participants.Sorry but I don't see the relevance of the SSD based system to the discussion. SSD is removeable, just as the microSD was. Options are always some variant of update in place or start fresh.Guys,
At risk of flak for re-lighting this one but ...
I see they've released the Raspberry Pi 500+ complete with SSD. Is now the time to have an Easy Way to Update SSD Systems to Latest Operating System?.
Option 1 - Brute force an in-place upgrade. Should work, if significant changes were not made. Will leave cruft behind, that may or may not come back to bite you. May also render your OS non bootable, which will make you sad and entail a bunch more work. This is not a good option if you are not comfortable with Linux. You could try doing this with a tested recipe, if someone writes one, even if you are not very Linux knowledgeable. Likelihood of fixing a non booting install, if you get the recipe wrong or the recipe does not correctly deal with your particular install, is low. Standard recommended fix for a seriously gacked install is start fresh.
Option 2 - Network install a clean OS, overwriting the current install. A great option for non customized installs.
Option 3 - Swap in a new SSD, and then do network install, so you have a known good backup. Mount the original SSD, and restore your data.
Option 4 - Ensure you have a known good backup of your data (you do have a backup of your data right). Ensure you know what you have installed/customized. Overwrite the current install with a clean OS, restore your data, add in your customization.
I like Option 4.
The cost of the initial upfront work is far outweighed by the time savings every time a new disk is needed, either with the current release or the shiny new release.
It's like having a great set of notes implemented as code.
Statistics: Posted by bls — Mon Sep 29, 2025 11:58 pm