I made the mistake of buying an SSD before doing thorough research, my SSD is a Pny Elite PSD1CS1050-480-FFS USB 3.1. It directly connects via a USB-C to USB-A cable.
Now this is not working, and that’s annoying but fine. I’ll try with an external power source first (powered USB hub) to rule out power issues. But if that’s not the solution, what other options do I have apart from buying a connector known to work and a different SSD?
The SSD is not the issue here, its the adaptor that causes the issue. If you get the correct adapter, as per those mentioned elsewhere in this thread, then you should be fine. Any SSD can be used so do not buy another one to try.
James A. Chambers Raspberry Pi 4 USB Boot Config Guide for SSD / Flash Drives might help you to find the proper adaptor for your needs. The guide is pretty up-to-date (Last Modified: October 17, 2022)
@Tamsy’s link is super helpful for a better overview, so thank you very much for that. I’ll hunt for the specific chipset of the adapter used here and see where that gets me.
@BertrumUK I understand that from previous comments, but there’s no adapter to be swapped out. The SSD is part of a USB encasing that’s probably glued and soldered to the actual drive, so changing just the adapter would probably destroy the SSD.
I really doubt that. Most such enclosures can be opened easily using the correct screwdriver (finding the right one might be a challenge depending on how difficult the try to make it). However, a different “adapter” might not be cost effective, as you would be exchanging the whole enclosure and just reuse the drive.
Check it out:
It’s comletely surrounded by a rubberized “shell” of some sort (sides and back), there’s no ingress except the USB-C socket.
I can peel the rubber off, of course, but it’s quite definitely glued on, so that would be rather violent and likely irreparable. Not sure what’s under the rubber (maybe screws, maybe more glue, who knows), but it’s definitely not as simple as most other SSD casings. I just clearly didn’t but the right product. And luckily, I can return it, so no harm done, I’ll just get something else that’s known for working well with the Pi.
I wouldn’t do that. It seems the build-in chip is simply not compatible for booting a RPI 4 from it.
What I notice in the picture is that cheap thin USB cable you are using. Looks to me more like a charger cable than a data cable. While chances are slim that a better quality cable can make a difference it might be worth a try. Check the specs of the cable: Is it build also for data transfer (besides of the charging capabilities)?
That’s also my impression.
It’s the cable that came with the device. I know that it’s capable of transferring data (I tried it with my phone), but it might still also be part of the problem, that’s certainly true.
Yeah, the rubber might be glued on, but I’d be very surprised if you didn’t find tiny screws underneath. The enclosure will almost certainly contain a standard drive with an m.2 connector. Using proprietory components for something like this would not be cost-effective for the manufacturer.
That image looks like a Sandisk Extreme BTW, not the Pny Elite PSD1CS1050-480-FFS you were talking about earlier.
From this video, the Sandisk indeed does not have any screws because the case is snapped-on plastic. The disk inside might be “glued” to the adapter board with double-sided tape, but it will have a standard connector.
Still haven’t found a proper Way, maybe this Time somebody with knowledge has an Idea:
Is there (as of December 2022) a Way to Check / Enable Trim on Home Assistant OS 9.3?
It may be known already, but I learned something that was prohibiting me to boot from my ASUS ROG STRIX Arion (with SAMSUNG 980 NVMe SSD) using a powered SABRENT 4 Port USB 3.0 Hub. The Pi wouldn’t boot. I had to put an unpowered / passive USB hub between the powered hub and the raspberry pi 4, and then it worked. Looking at https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=335537 it gave me the solution.
@Jpsy Thank you for posting how to install Home Assistant on a RPi 4b with SSD. I managed to get it to boot first tme. The only thing that I did differently was to use the Raspberry Pi image for windows and downloaded the image to a windows machine to then make the bootable SSD.
Once again tahnks.
Graham.
Thanks to allot of information on these forums i managed to update boot loader and prepare an USB SSD (cheap china type: 32TB, micro USB to USB3 cable, connected to a USB3 port on RPI4B).
I gets stuck on the following error (xhc-cmd err 6 type 1) which i can not find/ solve :
It does not have an external power supply, but the red led is continiously on so i assume power supply is fine (i use Raspberry Pi 4 USB-C Power Supply / 3A , 15W). Also, when i just connect the SSD as external drive to the RPI4 , it has no problems.
Does anyone recognise what im doing wrong?
32TB? I would believe that inside the case there is only an SD card reader and an SD card with a small capacity.
Did some research (which i should have done before) ,im pretty sure you are right, and i guess this is the reason of the RPI not booting on it.
Thanks.
The firmware update for JMS583 ended up making my Sabrent enclosure work properly with my Pi4, and I do not require the quirk to disable UAS, either.
First, I updated to the latest Raspberry Pi bootloader to enable USB boot, as detailed in the original post. However, I found a way to do this without needing a spare SD card or installing Raspberry Pi OS (if anyone is interested, I can detail what I did).
Initially, the SSD would only work with my system if it was plugged in to a USB2 port. I tried disabling UAS as suggested here, but it did not help. When this SSD+enclosure was connected to a USB3 port, it simply would not boot. I knew that I was not having any power supply issues, as I have the POE+ hat, which supplies up to 4A.
Searching the Sabrent website for updated firmware for my enclosure turned up no results, and contacting support went as well as you might guess (they were not helpful). However, I went out on a limb and checked the firmware update files for every other Sabrent enclosure which also used the JMS583 and found the most up to date firmware here (the link in the initial post is dead). Even though this updater supposedly only supports a single model of enclosure, it worked just fine for mine, which was unlisted.
After updating, the Pi was able to boot up straight away with the SSD in a USB3 slot, using UAS. The firmware version I found is not all that new (release notes say 02/01/2022), but I would recommend giving it a shot if you had issues in the past with your JMS583 Sabrent enclosure.
I wanted to share my real-world experience for the next person who tries to do this with a Samsung 2.5 SSD. I’ve had Home Assistant for years but recently decided to upgrade from RasPi3 to RasPi4 and SSD.
I initially purchased the StarTech USB to SATA adapter, and that worked with a Crucial SSD until the drive died a few weeks later. The same adapter did not work with the RasPi and Samsung drives (I tried three different ones: 830, 850 EVO, 850 PRO). It worked fine loading the Hass.io image, but when it came time to boot, they would not boot; or if they did start to boot, soon I would see disk timeouts and bad bit errors.
I eventually switched to another adapter that had the ASM235CM chipset, and that solved some of my problems. I could get HA to boot and start the initial config, but when I rebooted to install updates, the whole issue with bad bits on disk errors would show back up, and the web UI would state it’s starting up like a new install.
In an effort to get it online, I set up my Home Assistant on the SD card, then copied the image over, and HA expanded the SSD on boot and consumed the rest of the space. However, there was still an underlying issue with installing updates and reboots. The SSD adapter I was using had an option for external power. Once I added a little more power to the situation, all of the disk errors stopped. I’ve waited to post this until the next core update; I just updated to the latest core with no upgrade issues.
The YouTubers that promote how easy this is really should point out that running an SSD off a Raspberry Pi is probably going to require some external power to make the solution more stable.
If anyone is thinking about moving to an SSD, I highly recommend it. Just get an external connector that has an option for external power.
Hope that helps.
Thanks for you insights!
Don’t wanna appear smart arse, but I have to quote from my guide:
The second most important factor for your success is to use a power supply that is capable of driving your Pi 4 and (!) your SSD. Nothing will give you more headaches than an insufficient power supply. You system will stall when you don’t expect it and you will not understand why!
At least use the original Pi 4 power plug with 3 Ampere. If you can get a good quality supply with 3.5 Amps or more: Use it!
supberb howto, thats really amazing…
