Finally! Raspberry PI 4 boot from SSD, no MicroSD required!

Installation
1

Hi all, I just viewed this good news.

Official announcement: https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=274595&p=1663644#p1663644

More info: https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberrypi/bcm2711_bootloader_config.md

Andreas Spiess video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVhYvvrGhMU
and cheatsheet: https://www.dropbox.com/s/6bjx6nlu5sa7bxt/USB%20Boot%20Commands.docx

Cheers,
Piero

EDIT 2020/05/22 just to anticipate your next question:
Q: Does it work for HassOS?
A: Not jet (HassOS v3.13 and v4.6rc), but there is a partial solution which gives most of the benefits, just skip to reply n.32

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Interesting for sure and probably what we all think we want. But what is the practical gain ? Counting, I have 7 * R Pi undertaking various tasks and I’m not sure any would benefit particularly. Perhaps it will be useful in Home Assistant.

I do have a spare SSD, so I’m looking for an excuse to buy another R Pi :smile:

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SSD has a greater write endurance than SD == less chance of corruption.

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4

Yeah good they’ve finally done it, though might wait until its production released. Currently already booting from SD to SSD, so I’m already getting the benefit of the SSD.

5

1h

But what is the practical gain ?

SSD has a greater write endurance than SD == less chance of corruption.

And an SSD is blazing fast compared to SD and USB thumb drives.

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You won’t be seeing SATA III speeds through the USB port though.

7

Running Hassio we must wait an update of the supervisor to get this?

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USB = 5GB/s
Sata 3 = 6 GB

While USB is slower, there’s not a huge difference, and I did notice a nice speed increase on Raspbian going from an SD to SSD.

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Hahaha. Oh Dear. USB3 has an upper limit of 5Gb/s (notice the small b), however to qualify as USB3 all you have to do is be faster than USB2 (480Mb/s). Now, while the pi4 has made a substantial jump in USB throughput it is only about half of what SATA III throughput is capable of in Bytes/s (600MB/s).

2019-06-21-15_42_55-Window
2019-06-21-15_42_55-Window1522Ă—753 109 KB

If you’re on an older model pi, a SATA III capable SSD would be a waste of money. (Though there may be other advantages like caching).

b = bit
B = byte (8 bits).

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10

Here’s the same data about SSD on USB3 on Pi4, along with uSD performance.
So you’re still better off with SSD than uSD from both a speed and wear perspective.

SDStorage uSDStorage

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Yeah my comment wasn’t about SD vs SSD speeds. It was about SATA being limited by USB throughput.

And then the fact that this is not true:

There’s a big difference. About 50% in this case. It all depends on the USB3 chipset. Some barely qualify as USB3.

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It wasn’t referring to the potential of USB3 and how the Pi4 performs, more the comparison of SSD against uSD.

As for USB3 against SATA3, it is 5Gb/s against 6Gb/s, not the 6GB/s previously mentioned. But yes highly dependant on drivers, chipsets and the like.

You can also benefit from things like RAID storage on USB, something you can’t do with uSD.

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An update of HassOS (the underlying OS for a straight-from-image running Home Assistant) is required. So yes we probably have to wait a bit.

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No, That’s the point, it boots from where the boot loader is.
People are already booting from SSD’s on Pi3’s
Now we can do it from a Pi4

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Yeah, though Tom is right those graphs really put it in perpective (paraphrase from Animal Farm) : -
USB3 Good, SSD under USB3 Better
:partying_face:

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@Mutt I didn’t succeed on a RasPI 4 “prepared” (BOOT_ORDER=0xf41) and successfully tested with Raspbian Lite booted via SSD (no uSD).

Booting HassOS 3.13 32bit via SSD, the RasPI4 is stuck on a boot-loop, as shown in the picture below. Same result with HassOS 4.6rc, both 32bit and 64bit versions.

WhatsApp Image 2020-05-21 at 19.13.56
WhatsApp Image 2020-05-21 at 19.13.561600Ă—900 145 KB

The same HassOS 3.13 boots regularly via uSD on the same RasPI4.

Any hint?
Piero

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Bugger !

:rage:

I’ve just spent 2 hours digging out a spare Pi 4, a power supply, casing up a spare SSD and now you drop this on me.

:sob:

You’ve done everything I would have done, I haven’t a clue where to go from there
I’m not blaming you, I’m not blaming anyone, I just assumed it would work with Pi4 HassOS

Well I suppose that gives me a couple of days free time (not playing with a new Pi 4 HA test and more time … ) to continue with the COVID19 chores the wife wants me to do.

Well it looks like we’ll have to wait for the official EFI from RPF and then wait as @maurizio53 said but for a Pi 4 HassOS to catch up with that.
But now there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Thanks for your original Post :+1:

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No clue, HassOS partition hassos-kernel contains only the file zImage, no config.txt or the like here.

I hope this will be considered a killer feature to promote HassOS :wink:

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Meanwhile we can stick with this solution to boot the RasPI4 via SD and have the data partition on the SSD.
Tomorrow I will try it.

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I did this and it works perfect. I am will jump to no-SD when the function has more time to bake.