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

It wasnā€™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 canā€™t do with uSD.

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.

No, Thatā€™s the point, it boots from where the boot loader is.
People are already booting from SSDā€™s on Pi3ā€™s
Now we can do it from a Pi4

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

@Mutt I didnā€™t succeed on a RasPI 4 ā€œpreparedā€ (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.

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

Any hint?
Piero

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Bugger !

:rage:

Iā€™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:

Youā€™ve done everything I would have done, I havenā€™t a clue where to go from there
Iā€™m not blaming you, Iā€™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 ā€¦ ) to continue with the COVID19 chores the wife wants me to do.

Well it looks like weā€™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.

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

you should go with raspbian lite on the SSDā€¦ and then you should run supervised generic linux or HASS.core (docker)

@KingRichard Youā€™re technically right, but I prefer not to invest my time on a (maybe) deprecated software, thus instead trying to trust and adapt to a (maybe) strategic solution :wink:

Go with HASS.core thenā€¦

PieBru,
Iā€™m assuming that youā€™ve seen this : -

Now Iā€™m not saying that this has anything to do with it, but it may help others if @fshelton79 and yourself could report back what your controllers are

Thanks In Advance
:smiley:

It gives you a hint. ā€œUSB-MSD boot requires newer softwareā€. You need the newest *.dat and *.elf files from here:

Those need to be added to the boot partition, overwriting any of the old ones.

Iā€™ve tested this, and while it starts booting from the USB stick, it stopped a few seconds later with no video output. I was using a beta RPI4 64-bit image however, so it might be my own fault that it didnā€™t get any further.

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Good info.
Do you think that the Pi4 with this will boot from ANY ssd it can read ?
(considering the above James Chambers blog ?)
Iā€™m just trying to get a handle on whether the new EFT boot method has changed the landscape.

Regardless - Anyone who is sucessfull in this can they please write up their method, the kit used, the adapter information, the link to where they bought it and what ssd
Many people will be in your debt.
:heart_eyes:

Well for you guys who would like to try I wrote a short guide and maybe later I will add installing HASS.core into it. Anyway without further due https://krdesigns.com/articles/raspbian-official-boot-from-USB-SSD-drive

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Pretty much any standard Usb Mass Storage device should work, I believe.

@repvik I did similar tests by adding to the HassOS 1st SD partition (hassos-boot, where there is also a config.txt file) the bootloader files of an ā€œupgradedā€ Raspbian image which boots correctly directly from SSD (no SD), but I messed something or that isnā€™t enough to complete the HassOS boot process.

Yesterday I also wrote a short guide for myself and who may be interested.
Feel free to cherry peek what you want.
Sorry I donā€™t have a blog, so itā€™s PDF :frowning:

EDIT: new working link.

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PieBru
ā€œLink no longer availableā€ :cry: