SSD for Pi-Top?

Had same thought. Sadly, it looks as though you have to use it externally, via a USB port. What a pity!

NickV

Perhaps use a right-angle USB cable/adapter and then mount the SSD drive on the rail inside the Pi-Top.

That's the old Pi-Top you are looking at there. The current Pi-Top has a different layout.

Using a USB SSD looks easy with the old Pi-Top as the Pi's USB ports aren't flush to the outside like the new ones are.

https://learn.adafruit.com/assets/34955

With the new Pi-Top, it looks like you get two USB ports flush with the outside of the case and the other two have slim-line right-angle ribbon connectors which then run to the hub board inside. One appears to be taken to a USB port on the hub which appears to be available for internal peripherals to use.

Cannot find diagrams / photos for a USB port on the base.  Can you furnish a URL?

So, you are saying that adafruit's 2 kits are based on the older model?

The link you furnished takes me right back to the place that I linked for you - the green pi-top at adafruit.

I already did...

https://www.raspberrypi.org/magpi/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/knolling-shot-new-pi-top-web.jpg

Silver rectangle above the F5 key

The black diagonal on the left looks like the USB ribbon coming from the two right-angle plugs that fit into the R-Pi.

The current Pi-Tops appear to have the R-Pi located top left and a track pad below the keyboard.

https://pi-top.com/products/pi-top

https://static.pi-top.com/documents/pi-top/pi-top_Instruction_Manual.pdf

The older Pi-Tops appear to have the R-Pi top right and a track pad to the right of the keyboard.

https://static.pi-top.com/documents/pi-top/Original_pi-top_Instruction_Manual.pdf

The link to the Adafruit learning site you posted appears to show the older Pi-Top.

Yes, as that photo shows the old Pi-Top which appears to have space to plug USB cables into the R-Pi's USB ports inside the case.

The previous link I posted takes you to the Raspberry Pi site review of the current Pi-Top, which shows the new hub with what appears to be an internal USB port.

Probably not enough height to fit a X850 mSATA board with the old Pi-Top

https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=196334

direct on top as intended but plenty of space to fit it to the left of the Pi with a short USB cable.

You could use short USB extensions to make the remaining USB ports flush to the outside of the case for better access. 

Okay, now I see it.  Apologies.  Your pic seems to be from the Magpi review.

Clearly, the adafruit kits or the put-it-together blog is out of date.  Even the Hub/Pi interfacing technique has changed in pi-top v2, leaving a way to cleanly expose the RPi's USB & Ethernet ports to the rear.

Agreed.  There are some short stick USB SSDs around but I do not like them sticking out the back of the laptop.  I prefer your idea of a short USB cable connected with a 90-degree plug but how to mount an SSD inside the case on the rail is a challenge.

I like the X850 mSATA SSD storage expansion board but as you pointed out, it's probably too high.

but how to mount an SSD inside the case on the rail is a challenge

Just make a mounting bracket that sits between the SSD drive and the mounting rails of the Pi-Top. There are probably already designs for such things on Thingiverse.

Making a mounting bracket may not be necessary.  There are mSATA/USB stackable boards for the Raspberry Pi.  Here are 2 examples from https://www.startech.com/Search?search_term=msata+raspberry

Obviously, you can't stack inside the pi-top enclosure but the screws seem to line up with the Raspberry Pi which mounts magnetically on the rails.  It would appear that the mSATA cards could mount the same way.  I just need to go to a store which has a display pi-top model and verify that there is enough left over area for an extra board - should be - and an mSATA card can mount the same way.  Maybe, I can talk them into letting me try it out with the display model before purchasing.

Make sense?

Hopefully, there is enough power running on the battery as well as off a wall socket.  Running off a battery for an SSD (non-mechanical drive) should be okay.  Other opinions?

May be of interest - Felix has just done a video of a teardown of the new Pi-Top:

sudo Sergeant 15: Pi-Top Teardown

May be of interest - Felix has just done a video of a teardown of the new Pi-Top:

sudo Sergeant 15: Pi-Top Teardown