Hi there.
I am having issues with getting HA to boot off an SSD.
I have successfully burnt the 64-bit version of the Pi3 image to the SSD but when I plug it into the Pi and turn it on, I get nothing - no flashing green led at all.
Any advice, on getting this working, would be much appreciated.
I am using a Startech USB3.0 to 2.5" cable and my Pi is using the official 2.5A power supply.
I have also tried two different SSDs as well - 60GB Sandisk Ultra Plus and 120GB Samsung 750 EVO.
FYI, I wouldn’t spend any more time attempting this. I have the same Startech cable as you and the official power supply and could never get this working. You can read more details here, with a lot of information in that thread. The short of it is that the best you can do is use the officially support method of moving the Data to the USB connected SSD, while still using the SD card for the main OS, which will reduce the bulk of the writes on the SD card.
Actually, I re-read the thread and noticed that Flo was able to get it working on their RPi3B+, so it seems like it might work, I don’t have the + version. However, if you follow the steps to ensure USB booting is all enabled then you may get it to work. I still think however there is a limit to which SSDs the RPi3B+ build of HAOS supports.
Here are some other posts to look at details about the success/failure of this setup.
Thanks for that.
I tried burning HA to a USB stick and that booted fine, so booting from USB does indeed work “out of the box” on a 3B+.
I did try copying the contents from the SSD card to a formatted SD card as was suggested in the first of the threads you posted:
"Just to close this off - I got it working booting from SD card then USB SSD. Format an SD card with FAT32 and copy the contents of the “boot” volume from the USB SSD to the SD card."
However, that did nothing either.
Really confusing - just cannot work out why I cannot get it to work.
Bit of a further update on this.
I reinstalled HA on a regular SD card and then watched the logs when I plugged the SSD in.
I got this:
22-05-24 11:53:22 INFO (MainThread) [supervisor.hardware.monitor] Detecting HardwareAction.ADD hardware /dev/sda - /dev/disk/by-id/ata-Samsung_SSD_750_EVO_120GB_S33MNWAH920635B
22-05-24 11:53:22 INFO (MainThread) [supervisor.hardware.monitor] Detecting HardwareAction.ADD hardware /dev/sda1 - /dev/disk/by-id/ata-Samsung_SSD_750_EVO_120GB_S33MNWAH920635B-part1
so it definitely is being recognised.
As per timnolte’s first post, I tried to “move datadisk” but the SSD did was not an available option.
@Elsmandino yeah, I also got an SD card in a USB reader to boot on my RPi3B, but I couldn’t ever get my SSD to boot. You mentioned that your SSD wasn’t available to move data to. Did you make sure that your SSD was fully formatted to the correct format, and made sure any HAOS setup wasn’t still on your SSD from previous attempts?
Thanks Tim.
I might wipe the SSD and have another go. What format should it be formatted to?
Just a thought but did you update the bootloader?
No - I will definitely have a go at anything at the moment.
What does that involve, please?
Very easy… I could tell you, but this explains everything. Don’t worry about the Pi4, I have done this before on a Pi3.
Home Assistant Raspberry Pi 4 SSD Installation and Migration - YouTube
Thanks for that.
I followed the video but, as I am running a Pi3B+, the bootloader did not appear to do anything.
Very frustrating.
It suddenly occurred to me to actually plug in a monitor and there is actually some activity going on:
Does this help to give any indication on what the issue might be?
Yeah, that output you are getting is the same output I was getting with my RPi3B. No matter what I tried I couldn’t get HAOS to boot off of the SSD. In regards to what format to use on the SSD for use as a data drive I would recommend ext3, though I believe either FAT32 or NTFS may also work.
Try this. You only need to go to step 13 (reboot).
But don’t forget to remove the SD card.
Raspberry Pi Boot from USB SSD (Screenshots Included) (raspberryexpert.com)
Thanks for your further responses.
I tried to add the SSD disk as a data disk, as Tim suggested, but that would not work either.
I then decided to have a go at installing Raspberry PI OS Lite on the SSD and it worked straight away - i.e. without any SD card, just the SSD plugged in.
I then tried the other SSD and that worked perfectly too.
Really does not make sense - seems that the HA image, itself, is causing all the issues.
Any ideas on what else to try?
Have you managed to solve the problem? Experiencing same thing with my Pi3B+.
Booting from Pi OS from SSD works perfectly fine, but HA won’t boot no matter what cable/ssd I try.
Found dirty workaround (without having spare linux laptop):
Install HAOS on SSD. Install Raspbian on SD card. HAOS wont boot, it’ll go into Raspbian. SSH into Raspbian. Mount Raspbians’ /boot partition. Mount HAOS /boot. Wipe clean Raspbians’ /boot. Copy everything from HAOS /boot from SSD into cleanly wiped /boot on SD card. Reboot. SD card will be used only only to read /boot partition and it’ll boot into HAOS located on SSD.
Not ideal solution - since SD card needs to be inserted, but at least it isn’t used for anything except reading /boot partition during startup.
Getting exactly the same output.
Managed to get it working the first time. But after I unpowered the Pi to move it to my hallway closet, it’s failing.
Tried a 2nd SSD, same feedback.
Did anyone manage to fix it again?
After trying a new SATA-USB a 3rd SSD and 3 different installation methods, I gave up.
Then I bought an ODROID N2+ with eMMC and got it running in 1 go.
In case someone is trying this, my account below.
First I tried setting up a new instance on the ssd via the RPi Imager, but couldn’t get the backup restored in any way. The onboarding restore is mediocre at best, a dummy onboarding plus restore led to ‘system is damaged’ error and seemingly nothing to do to repair it.
Then I created an image with dd ... command and flash it with RPi Imager, no go.
Then I used balena etcher and cloned the sdcard to the ssd directly and voilla, it works beautifully… For now 
