Home Assistant on SD card won't start, but SD card is still readable

Hey all,

I was updating Home Assistant a couple weeks ago, and Home Assistant never started back up after the restart. I haven’t been able to get it back up (on that specific SD card), since. I bought a new SD card, flashed Home Assistant and got it running. So I know the Raspberry Pi 3 is good.

However, I want to access my configuration/automation/script files (or snapshots) on the SD card that won’t start Home Assistant. Interesting enough, I can load the SD card into my computer and can see some files, but they are files called ‘bootcode.bin’, ‘kernel7.img’, ‘start.elf’. I have no clue what these are.

On the SD card that won’t boot Home Assistant, how can I access my old config or snapshots? Any help appreciated!

I assume you are attempting to read the card on a windows pc. You will not be able to see the Linux formatted partitions without some (free) software.

Or booting from a Linux live image.

Thanks Tom,

I downloaded diskinternals and see the same file structure as before in Windows File Explorer. I am still unsure how to view the Linux formatted partitions. Do I need to do anything additional?

Try viewing the SD card with the Linux Reader program.

Sorry for being unclear. I was viewing the SD card with DiskInternals program. I see same files as seen with Windows File Explorer.

Do I need to mount the SD and/or image file? And if so, how do I do that? I see multiple removable storage devices, all with names that I haven’t seen before. But they seem to all be connected to the SD cardbecause they go away when I disconnect the SD card.

Just live boot a Linux os like Ubuntu if diskinternals isn’t working.

I see drives, but none contains *.yaml files. I am trying to save at least the configuration.yaml and config.yaml from the bricked drive

I don’t even know what you are showing there. What created what we are seeing in the screenshot there.

Do you have a linux machine? Or can you boot your windows computer with, say, a ubuntu USB stick?

It’s DiskInternals on Windows:

I don’t have linux, but if it’s the only way to see what’s on the SD card I might have to get it. Ext2Fsd and Ext2explore show nothing.