Hello, I have a Raspberry 4 B 8 GB and boot from a Sata 240 GB SSD. Do I need to increase the swap size ? Or should I completely turn it off ? The issue was due to a crash after an apt upgrade.
With 8GB of RAM you shouldn't really need a swap file, but it will depend on what software you're running. I'd be tempted to turn it off to improve performance and see if it works OK.
There's actually now (August 2024) two variants of the firmware you install. One tries to boot off USB and if that fails then tries the SD card. The other does the opposite :- SD first followed by USB. So you can choose the one which suits you best. Today I used the "USB first" variant and booted Fedora 40 from a USB SSD without a hitch. Fedora was installed on the SSD using Fedora's arm image installer program. It would probably be a good idea to check if your distro of choice has its own special installer or if the RPI imager can install it OK.
Main issue i did face is, not all SSD adapters can be used for this on RP 4B model. Hard to find a working one, i did a little bit of digging what was an issue why my adapter did not work, and it turned out the adapter uses a chip what RP not supporting. :/ When u buy or try to buy the adapter many times it is not inform u what chip they use in it.
Thanks for the explanation. You do need to be careful. I buy mine from maker outlets who have verified the adapter works rather than generic adapters from Amazon etc.
@@BytesNBits It did it actually boots up and shows the Uboot screen looking for USB SSD image and then goes to SD Card. It works.. Just doesnt have a green screen in my case.. Thanks.
I had the “Welcome to the Raspberry Pi Desktop” screen for more than an Hour. The Adapter that I use had a controller in it that is not Supported for the Raspberry Pi 😪.
Hi, Sd update EEPROM ok green display, Imager Os in ssd 1Tb ok. Quit sd shutdown, connect SSD start and reboot in 2 oportunities and waiting more than 1 hour and frozen "Welcome to the Raspberry Pi Desktop.... Release 5.2 - March 2024"
If I already have a pi that's using an SD card can I copy everything from the SD card over to the SSD, then boot up the PI with an SD card+USB bootloader, let it install and then hook up the SSD with all the old files?
Sort of. You'll need to prepare the SSD by flashing it with a suitable image. You can then copy over the data files from the USB. Don't try to copy the operating system stuff as that will not work - just your data files.
If you've updated the bootloader and checked the drive image it might be either the SATA converter or the drive. Try booting from a USB stick to see if the RPi is able to boot. That should help you identify which bits not working correctly.
Nice video. Thank you. I have got a Raspberry Pi 4B to boot from a SATA external hard drive. But I wonder if that can be done with a Raspberry Pi 5. Are you aware of any videos showing somebody going through all the steps to accomplish this with a Raspberry Pi 5?
I saw in another YT-video that it is not necessary to install a boot sector on the raspberry pi4. In the new versions of rsp pi4 it should be possible to boot directly from SSD. Can you confirm this?
Some of them already have the update installed. I went through the process to show how it's done. If you're not sure about your Pi4 just install it anyway.
Would you tell us that why i got error while booting my raspberry pi 4 with SATA 2.5 SSD through USB 3.0 " Error msg on boot - mmc1: Controller never released inhibit bit (s) "
Did you update the boot loader code? Do you have another USB drive you can try, even a USB stick? It might be a compatibility issue with the SSD drive. I hope this helps.
I am unable to get past the create USB SSD step. Pi imager says verification failed. Plugged into USB 3.0 port applied power, lights SSD case flash but the Pi is not booting. Any suggestions to remedy?
If the imager is failing it sounds like the issue is between the PC and the SSD drive. Can you try flashing it on another computer? Do you have another SSD drive to try?
I am now sure my RPI 4 is configured correctly to boot from a USB. A Kingston 240GB A400 SATA 3 2.5" Internal SSD SA400S37/240G connected to the RPI4 with a SATA to USB Cable - USB 3.0 to 2.5” SATA III Hard Drive Adapter boots just fine. Wanting a smaller form factor I got a Silicon Power 512GB A55 M.2 SSD SATA III Internal Solid State Drive 2280 mounted in a SSK Aluminum USB 3.2 Gen 1 to M.2 SATA NGFF SSD Enclosure Adapter. The RPI4 does not recognize the M.2 SSD. If you can tell me why it won't boot from the M.2 drive I'd appreciate it.@@BytesNBits
A great video. From my experience when an SD card pied up, losing all my saved programs and data, having a 500GB boot disk would seem to only make this problem the same if the boot procedure was compromised. Is it possible to partition the disk to mitigate against this eventuality and keep non-OS files safer?
The ssd gets partitioned into a boot FAT32 and an Ext4 rootfs partition. You can really resize and add partitions as you want after this initial setup.
What is the "Process of flashing this onto the ssd drive" ? My "General / service / options" window has passwords already installed. Why ? Should I erase them and create my own ? If i leave them will I be locked out ?
I was using a custom pre build from arcade punks that died recently. If i setup the sd card can i burn my prebuilt onto the ssd instead of sd card and let it rip ?
I bought mine from thepihut.com/ which is a UK maker shop. If you go for one of the Raspberry Pi dealers they tend to stock cables that have been tested with the Pi. Slightly more expensive but worth the reliability.
