HA Yellow CM5 Factory Reset Not Working

Installation Home Assistant OS
1

Hi all, I’ve managed to brick my HA Yellow CM5, 4Gb + 32Gb eMMC and wanted to add a 128Gb NVMe as additional storage.

With HA I used the move data disk process although the pop-ups are somewhat different to the tutorials, an extra UI appears requesting to use either the eMMC or NVMe as the main data disk. I selected eMMC thinking that the NVMe would then be additional storage, didn’t realise eMMC + NVMe can’t be used together.

The device then never recovered after a reboot and doesn’t load the GUI. I’ve tried removing and re-adding the NVMe, using rpi boot process again (it starts and closes immediately), the red button and red + blue button factory reset processes to no avail.

I’ve connected via Putty to perform a ha os datadisk wipe although this doesn’t seem to do anything.

Interesting entries in the boot process:

[ TIME ] Timed out waiting for device /dev/disk/by-label/hassos-data.
[DEPEND] Dependency failed for Home Assistant OS data partition migration.
[DEPEND] Dependency failed for HassOS data partition.
[DEPEND] Dependency failed for HassOS AppArmor.
[DEPEND] Dependency failed for HAOS swap file.
[DEPEND] Dependency failed for Docker persistent data.
[DEPEND] Dependency failed for Docker Application Container Engine.
[DEPEND] Dependency failed for HassOS supervisor.
[DEPEND] Dependency failed for Systemd persistent logging.
[DEPEND] Dependency failed for Flush Journal to Persistent Storage.
[DEPEND] Dependency failed for HAOS swap.
[DEPEND] Dependency failed for Ensure rauc.db contains version information.
[DEPEND] Dependency failed for Remove adopted rauc.db on first boot.
[DEPEND] Dependency failed for Grow File System on /mnt/data.
[DEPEND] Dependency failed for HAOS data disk detach.
[DEPEND] Dependency failed for HassOS data resizing.
[DEPEND] Dependency failed for File System … on /dev/disk/by-label/hassos-data.

[FAILED] Failed to start containerd container runtime.
See ‘systemctl status containerd.service’ for details.

Any advice is much appreciated.

Resources used:
Factory Reset for a CM5 HA Yellow?
https://yellow.home-assistant.io/guides/factory-reset/

2

Solution:
Rookie mistake as I was rushing to restore HA Yellow + trying to implementing late at night.

  • I don’t believe Putty (or Linux + Mac OS equivalent) needs to be run in order to perform the “ha os datadisk wipe”.
  • Perform the HA Yellow Getting Started steps using rpiboot. important rpiboot when installed on Win 10/11 has two apps - rpiboot CM, CM2-CM3 and rpiboot CM4-CM5 mass storage gadget. Don’t be like me, if you have a CM5 module run the “rpiboot CM4-CM5 mass storage gadget”. Late at night and I wasn’t wearing my glasses, I was seaching for rpiboot and the only search return was “rpiboot CM, CM2-CM3”, I was selecting this which opens and closes immediately.
  • When “rpiboot CM4-CM5 mass storage gadget” has completed the HA Yellow OS can be re_installed via Raspberry PI Imager.
  • Restore the back up (if you have one) which can take 30 mins or more.

Helpful resource: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWv-WYlHJWQ