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Boot from ssd-usb on rpi 3b
#1
Hi,
Has anyone tried to boot from a usb connected ssd on rpi3?
It should be possible on rpi4 but I have read about people having problems on rpi3.
My intention is to mount an M.2 disk in a usb enclosure and hook it up to my powered usb-hub.
What do I need to do to make the pi boot from usb? Or will it notice where the boot partition is automatically?
Does it work at all?
Cheers,
Pär W
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#2
Have you tried Berry Boot?
https://www.berryterminal.com/doku.php/berryboot
(2020-08-06, 10:01 AM)Celestine Wrote: Hi,
Has anyone tried to boot from a usb connected ssd on rpi3?
It should be possible on rpi4 but I have read about people having problems on rpi3.
My intention is to mount an M.2 disk in a usb enclosure and hook it up to my powered usb-hub.
What do I need to do to make the pi boot from usb? Or will it notice where the boot partition is automatically?
Does it work at all?
Cheers,
Pär W
Reply
#3
I tried a couple of times recently, but couldn't get it to work. Right now I'm booting from SD card and using the SSD for the root. As you say, it should be possible. You might have to make sure you have a good installation of OP on your SD card that has received all the latest updates, then copy (dd) it to your SSD. You also need to make sure your firmware is the most recent stable version.
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#4
Hi
Is that on pi3 or 4? The case you describe with boot from sd and the rest of the system on ssd is exactly what I want to avoid...
Cheers
Pär W
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#5
That's a PI4. The latest stable firmware update does support USB boot. There's some good information about how to set up the bootloader here: https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentatio..._config.md
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#6
Do you know if it would work on rpi 3 as well?
Cheers
Pär W
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#7
I'll have to break out one of my old 3B+ PIs and try it. I was never able to get OP1 to boot from USB. Again, the base distribution of OP2 will not boot from USB, you'd have to make sure that it has been installed and completely updated via apt before you try. So, the steps I would take (YMMV):
- Download the OP 2 Image
- Install on SD card
- Get running
- update via "sudo apt update -y && sudo apt full-upgrade"
- make sure the firmware is updated via "sudo rpi-update"
- remove your SD card and plug into another computer, attach you SSD and copy the entire SD card to the SSD using the "dd" command (this is Linux, not sure what you'd do on Windows)
- use gparted to expand the root partition to the remaining size of the SSD
- plug the SSD into your PI and see if it boots.

If you have a generic Raspibian distribution on another SD card, and a USB SD card adapter, you can do all this using the PI itself, but you shouldn't try to copy the active SD card to an attached drive.

One thing... you can make your boot SD partition read-only, and only use your SD card for the boot partition. You'll need to make changes in /boot/cmdline.txt and /etc/fstab to point to the PARTID of your SSD drive root partition, so you are using your SD card for /boot and your SSD for everything else. It should give you some protection from SD card corruption, and it actually gives you a little faster boot. Of course, when you need to make updates to /boot, you'll need to make it writable again. This is something you can do from raspi-config.
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#8
You can absolutely boot from Rpi3b without SD card... instructions here https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentatio...des/msd.md
Beyond flipping the bit, all you do is use card copier to copy your sad card to your USB drive... reboot with the sd card removed.
Viola it’s done.
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#9
Why is this an big Problem, you only use the SD-Card some Seconds on boot.
Later the SD will not make your Computer slower and you use the fast SSD.
You also be shure to use the SSD for the swap device, your pi2 does not have enough RAM.
Another Thing to consider: your pi3 has to use the bottleneck usb2, so it will never be as fast as an pi 4.
But for Openplotter2 on an pi3 will work well.

jm2c Holger
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#10
Hi,
I did not say it is a big problem. I just want to keep complexity down as much as possible.
Cheers,
Pär W

(2020-08-07, 01:47 AM)rastam4n Wrote: You can absolutely boot from Rpi3b without SD card... instructions here https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentatio...des/msd.md
Beyond flipping the bit, all you do is use card copier to copy your sad card to your USB drive... reboot with the sd card removed.
Viola it’s done.

That sounds good. I will certainly give it a try!
Cheers,
Pär W
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