#312 Boot a Raspberry Pi4 with an SSD to make it reliable and fast

Grüezi, Herr Spiess. I know this is old now, but did you ever do any power consumption measurements with the SSD? I am trying to figure out a mobile solution with SSD, camera and sense hat.

I did this with my Raspberry Pi 4 because it's constantly running with my PiHole Server on and a Micro SD Card would've probably failed eventually from it being on basically all the time unless I do Maintenance or Updates on it. I bought a Silicon Power 512GB M.2 SSD SATA III it was cheap and only $25.00 Dollars on Amazon it's not as good as some of the other top Brand SSD's but I haven't had any problem's with it going on about two to three Months and I don't need anything too fast or powerful since all it's basically doing is running the PiHole Server. I also have a Backup PiHole Server which is used with my Raspberry Pi 3 but that doesn't have the 3.0 USB Ports like the Raspberry Pi 4 has so I just use a cheap Silicon Power 512GB Micro SD Card in that since it's not constantly running. So far I've been a big fan of Silicon Power they seem to make cheap but quality stuff and they have a pretty decent Warranty of 3 Years you can't beat that kind of Warranty for a cheaper SSD I highly recommend checking out Silicon Power stuff.

is there someone else who saw d34db33f as deadbeef??

Even after a couple of years this video is still useful, thanks.

I run a NexcloudPi installation on a Raspberry Pi 4b, booting from SSD. Works great, also with passive cooling.

Humbly, Ylan

You do know what 0xd34db33f is right? It is not necessary.

I am still not sure I would want to boot off an SSD.

I totally understand what you mean about losing your 'valuable data', but where my data is that valuable then I would also want to keep it on an encrypted drive. On my desktop, Linux is quite happy booting on an encrypted root partition, but I am not sure how you would achieve that on a Raspberry Pi (especially a headless Raspberry Pi). For that reason I would be tempted to keep the root partition on a rarely written to, and unencrypted, SD card; and keep the regularly updated (and more valuable) data on an encrypted SSD.

Until now I have not used my Raspberry Pi for anything that needs lots of written data, so I just have the SD card (which is occasionally imaged to me PC, so if the card does get corrupted I can easily create a new image of the card); but looking to the future, when I may be putting other services on a Pi, I am still considering leaving the root partition on the SD card.

there is an update of this video ?

I've corrupted too many SD cards to trust them. On the other hand, I've never had an issue with a well maintained SSD/HDD.

Thank you, direct to the point and worked the first time.!!!!!

Thanks for the video. Over wifi SSH I get to the point where i successfully edit /boot/cmdline.txt (i repeat to check its been updated), then reboot, but at that point i cant reconnect as the device doesnt connect to my router. Both sdcard and ssd (Samsung T7) have the same wifi settings. If i plug into a router ethernet port, the device still isnt recognised :-( I booted up the Pi with the SD on the latest recommended built (Bullseye 32) in advance to check i could get to the desktop - all ok.

Thank you, Sir. This works unlike many other videos out there. You've saved me, once again!

I agree: it’s best to be humble

d34db33f or deadbeef, easter egg?

Hi, great video! Although Raspberry Pi 4 supports USB boot natively now, it only works with Raspian. It doesn't support Ubuntu. Can you do a video for Ubuntu? Thanks!

I'd recommend A-Data Premier A1 cards for the boot drive because boot usually needs to read small file fragments from the card and that card has the best random access latency out of all SD cards. Be sure to get the A1 variant because A2 version is worse. For mass storage that card is not the fastest available, more like the most stable performance for all cases (that is, usage pattern matters less for this card but the max optimal pattern is slower than high end Samsung, Kingston or Sandisk cards).

Since its 2021 and new versions of Rasbian OS are out with native SSD support, this process is much easier. Now If only SSD's came self powered instead of USB powered, things would be perfect. but my SSD keeps getting corrupted due to the low power RPI4 USB ports. I guess I'll have to make my own self powered USB 3.0 cable!

Legendary comment. 😀

why did my pi4 just natively work with usb boot out of box? Its been running plex stable for a week, no issues at all? Also the only thing I did before hand was use the pi imager to flash a usb boot firmware(green screen process). Will I run into any issues?

it works today? shou i try it?

After doing this can you remove the SD card forever?

great!

after the burning of ssd card, I cannot see the ssd on my pc, how I can fix this to setup the wifi?

I did it once, then before changing cmdline.txt my pi frooze and now it is not booting from the ssd.

I am now trying to reflash the ssd using balenaEtcher on Windows but it fails everytime.

Someone had the same problem?

KingSpec is BIGGEST CRAP ON EARTH!
I used a KingSpec Z3 with a RPi 4 running Home Assistant using Docker. It was "in production" for roughly 3 months before it died, albeit in read-only mode to allow data retrieval.
Will now pay that extra dollar and go for a trusted brand.

It is quite painful to listen to you.

Hi Andreas,
Is this also possible with Hassio? Because I already lost a few sd cards the last years with the raspberry pi.

Well, it boots, but can't get access to root for some reason even though I did everything as you demonstrated here. So can't get INTO the system. I'm not techy enough to figure it out.

All thank to @darkphi on telegram he help with bitcoin flips and fresh cc and it work I don't no what I will do x cxxxxx XXp bab. B C V V u ....you are the real deal 💯

Wow!!!!! This is amazing!!! Thank you!!!! 🔥 🔥 🔥

can i wait for pi5 or buy pi4

usb booting is worse than emmc , sd card

I bought a jmicron nvme adapter, JMC583, useless doesn't work with raspi at all. Suck

Thanks Andreas, I did learn too much about many thing in this special video.

Fails with Samsung 860EVO 1TB. OS : 2020-08-20-raspios-buster-armhf.
Timed out waiting for device /dev/serial1
Dependency failed for Configure Bluetooth Modems connected by UART
Timed out waiting for device /dev/disk/by-portuuid/58ce116e-01
Dependency failed for /boot
Major bummer.

has anything changed since this video?

Give me please this rasberry pi

Hi Andreas,
I copied the ssh file and wpa_supplicant.conf file to boot directory of the SSD on my PC. When I rebooted the Pi after I edited the cmdline.txt, the SSD LED blinked. However, I also can't access to the Pi. Why can't I access to the Pi? What should I do?

Hi Andreas,

I tried to follow your guild on my Raspberry Pi4. I used 1T SSD.
I have a problem. After I installed the Raspbian on the SSD using balenaEtcher(or rpi-imgaer), I couldn't see my SSD on my pc(Windows 10). It was really plugged in to the pc and recognized by Windows OS. (I checked it in device manager) However, I couldn't the SSD on my computer directory. So I couldn't copy a ssh and a wpa_supplicant.conf file to the boot directory of my SSD. I copied them to the SD card only.
Instead, I copied them to the SSD on the Pi. For that, I mounted the SSD to /mnt/mydisk and copied two files to the boot directory of the SSD manually. The weird thing is when I open the boot directory of SSD, it is empty. Anyway, I copied two files there. And then, I unmounted the SSD again.

I changed the partUUID of the SSD as you advice and replaced /boot/cmdline.txt file with the changed ssd partuuid. And then, I rebooted the Pi. After that, I couldn't access to my Pi anymore.
I think it's because of using of ssh file and wpa_supplicant file. How can I fix it?
I have already installed Raspbian on my SSD manytimes, but I can't find the SSD on my windows OS.

I hope you'll get back to you with the best solution.
Thanks.
jense

Lol the little pointer with a glove!

I guess you know by now but on my Raspberry PI 4 8GB I just installed 64bit version of Raspberry PI OS, updated the bootloader, changed the boot order to SSD and it works great. No need to fart around anymore to get SSD boot to work :-)

I’m sorry your tiny hand made me crack up so much that I had to rewatch a good part of the video lmao

And it’s still cheaper than a “good” chrome book

very helpful!

Very cool video, Thank You for sharing.

The newest firmware for the pi4b has usb boot enabled by default.

dead beef