Western Digital has been bringing its hard drive range to the Raspberry Pi thanks to a series of PiDrive devices.
These combine the Raspberry Pi microSD card with a larger WD hard drive to provide a Pi with a beefed-up storage system.
The full article can be found in The MagPi 56 and was written by Lucy Hattersley.
The WD PiDrive Computer Centre features a Raspberry Pi 3 and a WD PiDrive Foundation Edition 375GB package. You also get a wireless keyboard and mouse and a plastic case to hold both the Raspberry Pi and WD hard drive.
Assembling the hardware proved easy enough. Simply screw the Raspberry Pi board to the base of the case and then screw the hard drive in next to it. A USB cable splits out to provide power to the Raspberry Pi and the hard drive. Included are a power adapter and all cables.
The lid comes with a magnetic top, so it’s securely slotted to enclose the drive, but can be quickly removed to access the Pi and hook the GPIO pins up to electronic components.
Foundation Edition
It’s the Foundation Edition software that makes this system sing.
It would have been easy just to produce a kit that uses the hard drive as an external drive to a regular Raspberry Pi.
However, WD has taken the time to produce a custom edition of NOOBS that works directly with the main drive.
You select SDA1 during the installation process, and it walks through the process of installing Raspbian with PIXEL. From then on you have a version of Raspbian running on the full 375GB hard drive.
Not only that, but WD has produced a custom edition of BerryBoot alongside its Foundation Edition Software (magpi.cc/2ns5lnA). BerryBoot’s boot selection screen makes it easy to add multiple operating systems to your Raspberry Pi, and the ample storage gives them space to breathe.
We added Ubuntu Mate 16.04, OpenELEC, and RetroPie, all alongside Raspbian. Each OS had plenty of space for files.
All in all, we liked this kit. Adding a large hard drive transforms the Raspberry Pi, and it’s all enclosed in a nice mini desktop-style case.
Last word
5/5
A lovely piece of kit that offers excellent Raspberry Pi integration with a larger hard drive.
