My reasons to boot from a USB SSD is more reliability and larger capacity (speed to a lesser degree).
I had a couple of SD card failures in as many years but my RPi is running most of the time (live aboard). I not only run qtVlm (and OpenCPN as a secondary navigation program) with lots of mbTiles charts, but use the RPi for other tasks (Internet, OpenOffice, music, . . . ) and plan to expend the usage ( e.g. monitor and log data from several sensors, . . . ).
I now boot from the USB SSD without problem, even my Moitessier Hat is working.
How did I do it?
- Installed the latest rpi-eeprom using the recovery release (https://github.com/raspberrypi/rpi-eepro...5.28-137ad). Note: this is BETA.
- Intalled OpenPlotter (image, not NOOBS) on a SD card and booted the RPi 4
- Plugged the USB SSD drive and copied the SD card into it with the copier included in the Openplotter release.
- Installed the latest image release of Raspbian (kernel 4.19) on the SD card and rebooted the RPi 4 (https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/raspbian/)
- Re-booted the RPi 4 and copied the USB MSD firmware files in the boot partition of the USB SSD. (https://github.com/raspberrypi/rpi-eepro...5.28-137ad)
- Ready to boot from the USB drive without an SD card . . .
Reference: https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewt...3&t=275187
Note. I do not know if using the latest Raspbian OS makes any sense in view of the updating of OpenPlotter which took place when installing it. I only know that we should not use sudo rpi-update because this installs the 5.xx kernel, incompatible with the Moitessier Hat. (I am a dummy in Linux . . .)
I had a couple of SD card failures in as many years but my RPi is running most of the time (live aboard). I not only run qtVlm (and OpenCPN as a secondary navigation program) with lots of mbTiles charts, but use the RPi for other tasks (Internet, OpenOffice, music, . . . ) and plan to expend the usage ( e.g. monitor and log data from several sensors, . . . ).
I now boot from the USB SSD without problem, even my Moitessier Hat is working.
How did I do it?
- Installed the latest rpi-eeprom using the recovery release (https://github.com/raspberrypi/rpi-eepro...5.28-137ad). Note: this is BETA.
- Intalled OpenPlotter (image, not NOOBS) on a SD card and booted the RPi 4
- Plugged the USB SSD drive and copied the SD card into it with the copier included in the Openplotter release.
- Installed the latest image release of Raspbian (kernel 4.19) on the SD card and rebooted the RPi 4 (https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/raspbian/)
- Re-booted the RPi 4 and copied the USB MSD firmware files in the boot partition of the USB SSD. (https://github.com/raspberrypi/rpi-eepro...5.28-137ad)
- Ready to boot from the USB drive without an SD card . . .
Reference: https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewt...3&t=275187
Note. I do not know if using the latest Raspbian OS makes any sense in view of the updating of OpenPlotter which took place when installing it. I only know that we should not use sudo rpi-update because this installs the 5.xx kernel, incompatible with the Moitessier Hat. (I am a dummy in Linux . . .)