Hi I bought this quite snazzy PI case with a mSATA adapter How to Install Raspberry Pi 4 +X857/X862/X872 Storage board+X735 power mgnt board+X857-C1 case? - YouTube . Specifically I bought this drive: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B08439XGY1/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Now the fact that the size of the drive may seem like overkill to some aside, I set about following these instructions to change the boot order to boot from USB first, as the supplied adapter that came with the case is essentially a USB SATA adapter.
As the guide states, after formatting a microSD card with the new bootloader, the screen does indeed flash green. (I have an old screen attached with HDMI). So that part seems successful.
I then formatted the mSATA drive and installed Home Assistant OS on it, using Raspberry PI imager, which all went smoothly, then installed the drive in the case and, put the lid on and secured the whole thing together, as per the guide for the case above.
Then I booted and waited (I waited longer than normal as I assume it was looking for external volumes) and then - nada. It didn’t find any bootable external media. (By this point I of course had removed the microSD bootloader/changer to allow it to boot directly from SSD.
So my first question is, what’s the deal? I’m pretty sure I followed all the guides to the letter. My second question is that assuming no one can give a definitive answer, is there a way to browse the file system by booting from microSD and use standard Linux commands to try to find and mount the SSD drive and at least see if the system can physically mount and see the drive?
I tried all the usual linux commands, such as fdisk -l (which shows absolutely nothing, sfdisk (non functional at all) cfdisk (same) and several other common Linux commands, all to no avail as the majority of these utilities appear to simply be missing in this OS?
I get that the developers are trying to provide a simplified experience for users, but stripping out essential tools that can be used to troubleshoot these kinds of issues seems a bit much really?
I don’t mind getting down and dirty with the Linux cl, as even though it’s been many years since I did this, I accept that if you want to get anything meaningful done with Linux, it comes with the territory.
I tried installing some of these utilities with apt-get, but of course apt doesn’t work either. So is there a way first that I can install the prerequisite tools I need just to see if the full system is actually working or not? Can a Linux file system see my SSD? Is it active and if so, are there some other steps I can take to get things fully up and running?
I tried mount as in sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt just to have a blind stab at finding and mounting the drive to see if it could be physically mounted (of course next would be sda2 and so on), but this just gave me an error message stating that the device could not be mounted and then asks “are you root”?
So even to mount the drive I need to be root? So my final question is how do I get to be root so I can mount an external drive?
Any insights anyone can offer would be much appreciated.
As for the size of the drive, I figured I would find a use for it, maybe as a NAS, or a media server or FTP, all of which seems possible with Home Assistant OS.