Right off the bat, let me acknowledge that I am by no means an expert on Raspberry Pi. If anything, I’m a beginner with Pi who was fortunate enough to find a sponsor for this video who valued a beginner’s perspective on things.

WD Labs is the sponsor for this video. They sent me their full Raspberry Pi kit which they call the Compute Centre, which includes a Pi 3, keyboard, case, mouse, power supply, a microSD card that plugs into the Pi preinstalled with software, and a hard drive.

Now, the hard drive is the unique part of this kit. As you probably know, you don’t need a hard drive to use a Raspberry Pi. In a conventional setup, you just run a Pi’s software from a microSD card you place in its card slot. I have to admit that initially I assumed that the benefit of the hard drive was just the extra storage, making it a good fit for media center projects. And while it is good for that, after some time with WD Labs’ hard drive setup (which they call a WD PiDrive) I came to realize that the real benefit is that you’re able divide up the hard drive into multiple profiles that you can customize. The video shows this off pretty well I think, so I won’t repeat myself.

Bottom line: I genuinely believe the addition of the PiDrive to a Raspberry Pi setup is a useful tool for makers interested in tinkering with a range of projects. In my experience, it sure beats formatting and juggling a handful of confetti-sized micro SD cards and is arguably more affordable at $19 than the 7 or 8 microSD cards it replaces.

So, I hope you like the video. I hope to make more getting started guides like this going forward. And just know that this whole Raspberry Pi thing (at least for me) is like learning a foreign language while simultaneously learning how to use a new computer that doesn’t quite work the way you’re used to. It’s a challenge, but it’s a rewarding one and just like learning anything you begin to get more comfortable with it as you keep at it. So keep at it, familiarize yourself with the official Raspberry Pi site (which is mercifully beginner-friendly) and just know that any problem you come up against is just a web search away from a solution because there’s a lot of great info out there.

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This video is sponsored by WD Labs. You can learn more about them and their line of Raspberry Pi kits and accessories at http://wdlabs.wd.com/ .

Hardware Used in This Video

WD PiDrive Compute Centre
https://www.wdc.com/products/wdlabs/wd-picompute-centre.html#WDLB032RNN

Alternately, if you already have a Raspberry Pi setup and would simply like to add a PiDrive to it, you can pick up the following, which includes a hard drive, the unique data/power cable, and a microSD card preinstalled with a custom version of NOOBS:

WD PiDrive Foundation Edition
https://www.wdc.com/products/wdlabs/wd-pidrive-foundation-edition.html

Logging In to Raspberry Pi

Username: pi
Password: raspberry
Note: when a password is typed you will not see any characters being
entered. This is normal.

Commands Used in this Demo

sudo nano /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf
(see this guide for more info on configuring Wi-Fi using command line: https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/configuration/wireless/wireless-cli.md)

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install kodi
sudo apt-get install --no-install-recommends xserver-xorg
sudo apt-get install raspberrypi-ui-mods
reboot

To learn more about Raspberry Pi, I highly recommend the resources provided by the Raspberry Pi Foundation: https://www.raspberrypi.org/resources/

To learn more about the PiDrive and configuring Project Spaces, I recommend this getting started guide by WD Labs: http://wdlabs.wd.com/global/docs/wd-pidrive-foundation-edition-project-spaces.pdf