STICKY: USB boot now working on Pi3

[W. H. Heydt]

Will it hurt my pi 3 if it is able to boot from SD card and usb. Mine is capable of doing both.

Nope. No harm at all. It will try the SD card, if not present or not bootable, it will "look" for a bootable USB device.

[lachiepostma]

if i use this feature, will i still be able to boot of a micro sd card?

[fruitoftheloom]

if i use this feature, will i still be able to boot of a micro sd card?

YES !!

[p1_p1_p1]

usb boot is working but when i downloaded curr. version with desktop and install it on 8gb flash it fails verifing ?!?
it runs in rasp 3 b but LSB failed -resize the roodt filesystem failed
failed to start hostname service and i have command prompt only,
after day of playing with shitberry i have finally command prompt - awesome crap.

after another day i still doesnt have running atleast ssh and i tried everything in thread
viewtopic.php?t=86950
ssh file, sudo raspi-config ... nothing ... port 22 silencio ...

im guessing what elevation shoud i use to throw this crapberry into local pond.
i have checked and reformated sd card, tried another one, same crap.

[ghale]

Hello people,
I'm a real newbie and I'm sorry to bother you.

I read here https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentati ... des/msd.md how to boot Raspberry Pi 3 from HDD, but I'm not sure about these:

1) Is mandatory to modify OTP adding program_usb_boot_mode=1 to the end of /boot/config.txt? Or with latest version of Raspbian I can boot from external device without touching OTP?
2) Can you confirm me that I can boot from SD if HDD is not present or bootable?

I've tried (without modifying OTP) to boot from 2 different HDDs and two USB (3.0) pendrives, without success.

Someone can help me, please?
I'm afraid to touch my Raspberry because I'm not sure of what to do.

[DougieLawson]

Woah. That is the most awesome thing ive seen all day. Would this work with a pi 2

NO. PI3 only.

You can boot a PI2 with just bootcode.bin on an SDCard.

[davidcoton]

Woah. That is the most awesome thing ive seen all day. Would this work with a pi 2

NO. PI3 only.

You can boot a PI2 with just bootcode.bin on an SDCard.

Err, Dougie, does USB boot without SDCard not work on the new Pi2B? I know it will NOT work on the original version. (Sorry I can't remember the board revisions and don't have time to research now.)

[DougieLawson]

Err, Dougie, does USB boot without SDCard not work on the new Pi2B? I know it will NOT work on the original version. (Sorry I can't remember the board revisions and don't have time to research now.)

I don't know. Nobody has ever positively said it worked. I don't have a PI2B2 to test it.

All of my RPI3s boot from USB devices.

[fos]

Has the USB Boot via hard disk drive been enhanced in the new RPi 3 B+ ?

Thank you,
v/r
fos

[W. H. Heydt]

Has the USB Boot via hard disk drive been enhanced in the new RPi 3 B+ ?

Define "enhanced". The only change I know about is that the Pi3B+ is set up to boot from USB (or PxE) by default. I got a Pi3B+ yesterday and within 5 minutes of opening the package, I had it booted from a PiDrive by swapping it in to replace a Pi3B. No muss, no fuss.

(And is response to some non-current, but still moderately recent posts...the Pi2Bv1.2 should be able to have the OTP bit set and boot from USB. The ability is a feature of the '2837 SoC and is therefore, board independent. I even have a CM3L--same SoC--that boots directly from an MSD, but nobody asked about that. At least not recently.)

[fos]

Thank you for the info. I have a 3 B+ on the way.

[mikerr]

Has the USB Boot via hard disk drive been enhanced in the new RPi 3 B+ ?

Define "enhanced". The only change I know about is that the Pi3B+ is set up to boot from USB (or PxE) by default.

The new bootrom code has various compatibility fixes in it to support a larger variety of USB devices and PXE network environments,
as Eben mentions here: https://youtu.be/tncUe8QYLoQ?t=7m4s

[fos]

I thought I heard something about changes to the bootrom in the video.

Thank you for the link.
v/r
fos

[QBall1977]

Doesn’t work for me. Had a Pi 3 running Stretch as a desktop PC from a large USB Pendrive Sandisk, without MicroSD on the 3B+ (straight swap out) this seems to do nothing...

Maybe a setting? will try fiddling with config.txt on the microSD. The program_usb_boot_mode=1 didn’t seem to do much.

Anyone have any suggestions?

[davidcoton]

Did you update the USB installation of Stretch beforee moving to the Pi3B+?

Code: Select all

sudo apt update
sudo apt full-upgrade

[cspan]

With respect to USB boot (I'm mainly interested in the 3B+ at this point), there seem to be a number of possible ways to do it:

• flash/thumb drive

• SSD

• external hard drive powered via USB (e.g., Seagate Slim, WD My Passport]

• external hard drive with its own power supply (e.g., via a powered USB hub, its own power supply/wall wart, or even an internal hard drive set into a powered SATA dock

Which of these would be most suitable for use of the Pi as a desktop replacement (email, Libreoffice, browsing, some basic picture editing but no video editing)?

And is it the case that people have found booting from a mechanical hard drive does not work well unless the drive has its own power? I have been able to read/write to an external USB hard drive without its own power supply, but I never tried to boot from one. There seems to be some belief here that the spin-up of the drive upon booting draws too much power, and therefore the only hard drives for booting should be powered ones. Is that accurate? And I think I read that they should be spun up prior to starting the Pi - is that right?

Another question: I have seen mentioned separating out the boot partition from the root partition, making the boot read-only on an SD card. I am curious how this is done, but I suspect it might make update/upgrade even more complicated than my attempt to move my dual-boot NOOBS card from my 3B to the 3B+ (failed).

Thanks!

[W. H. Heydt]

With respect to USB boot (I'm mainly interested in the 3B+ at this point), there seem to be a number of possible ways to do it:

• flash/thumb drive

• SSD

• external hard drive powered via USB (e.g., Seagate Slim, WD My Passport]

• external hard drive with its own power supply (e.g., via a powered USB hub, its own power supply/wall wart, or even an internal hard drive set into a powered SATA dock

Which of these would be most suitable for use of the Pi as a desktop replacement (email, Libreoffice, browsing, some basic picture editing but no video editing)?

And is it the case that people have found booting from a mechanical hard drive does not work well unless the drive has its own power? I have been able to read/write to an external USB hard drive without its own power supply, but I never tried to boot from one. There seems to be some belief here that the spin-up of the drive upon booting draws too much power, and therefore the only hard drives for booting should be powered ones. Is that accurate? And I think I read that they should be spun up prior to starting the Pi - is that right?

Another question: I have seen mentioned separating out the boot partition from the root partition, making the boot read-only on an SD card. I am curious how this is done, but I suspect it might make update/upgrade even more complicated than my attempt to move my dual-boot NOOBS card from my 3B to the 3B+ (failed).

Most of that you're going to have to answer for yourself. The most compact way to do it a USB stick. Second most compact is SSD. SSD also makes it easier to have a lot more storage (if you need it). Your typical SSD can be powered from a single USB port. When you get to HDDs, it gets more complicated. You can keep the cost down and get a *lot* more space with an HDD. If you can get a PiDrive (not sure if they're still avaiable from WD), you can power it from a single USB port because WD tuned it for minimal power. People have reported on direct power from other 2.5" form factor HDDs as well. If you go to a 3.5" form factor, you'll definitely need additional power (3.5" drive need 12v as well as 5v).

[hippy]

If you're talking about 39-43, they don't matter. They are not exposed and will have the default pull enabled (down, I believe), so won't interfere with the boot process.

The page does say "selecting the high bank is likely to produce a non-bootable Pi, unless you're using a Compute Module (any version)" so it does seem there is some real danger.

I don't know how easy it is to programmatically set the OTP bits and render the Pi unbootable but if someone hacked some commonly used repository, package or application and embedded a time bomb quite a few could be at risk without their knowing it.

This is why there's growing interest in GitHub hacking and hacking up-stream libraries. Get the bomb planted then just sit back and watch others let it trickle down. That's how we in the UK ended up with horse meat in Lasagne without anyone realising what they were eating.

[rpdom]

This is why there's growing interest in GitHub hacking and hacking up-stream libraries. Get the bomb planted then just sit back and watch others let it trickle down. That's how we in the UK ended up with horse meat in Lasagne without anyone realising what they were eating.

That's not quite the same thing. Setting a software bomb can do some actual damage. While the meat thing meant that people were eating something that they didn't expect to be eating, and maybe would have preferred not to, it is unlikely to have caused them any physical damage. TBH when I first heard about the meat thing my first thought was "mmm, tasty", although I prefer to make my own lasagne so I know what goes in it*

*The last one I made was kangaroo. The next one may be 100% horse meat, possibly.

[cspan]

Most of that you're going to have to answer for yourself. The most compact way to do it a USB stick. Second most compact is SSD. SSD also makes it easier to have a lot more storage (if you need it). Your typical SSD can be powered from a single USB port. When you get to HDDs, it gets more complicated. You can keep the cost down and get a *lot* more space with an HDD. If you can get a PiDrive (not sure if they're still avaiable from WD), you can power it from a single USB port because WD tuned it for minimal power. People have reported on direct power from other 2.5" form factor HDDs as well. If you go to a 3.5" form factor, you'll definitely need additional power (3.5" drive need 12v as well as 5v).

There's a chance SanDisk will replace the card under warranty. I'm in that process now. If they come through with a new one, I may well use it - and that would be the most compact way of all! Of course, it's not a USB boot that way. But I could have a USB stick (or two) and that old class 6 card as backups. I could keep my data on an external hard drive that I already use for backup, and just use the flash stuff for the OS.

I have verified that my Pi3B+ will boot from external powered HDD (turned on before the Pi) and from USB stick as well (already inserted in Pi upon starting). Both also had no trouble with shutdown or reboot. The only other kind of boot I could do (and might have at hand, which is an easy/natural way to accessorize the Pi) is a non-powered external HDD, but I think I've already read on the forums that such things can be problematic, perhaps because of the timing of power-up?

Anyway, I don't know how long a microSD card ... or flash stick ... might last if one uses the Pi as an everyday computer. 6, 9, 12 months? I might find out someday. Fortunately those things aren't that expensive - and could be considered a consumable item. If I don't move the machine much, an external powered HDD might make the most sense. But I do like the small form factor of the Pi.

[techblogger911]

+1 the RPi 3B is 1200mA by default
i still need a cable to have it play

[HawaiianPi]

With respect to USB boot (I'm mainly interested in the 3B+ at this point), there seem to be a number of possible ways to do it:

• flash/thumb drive
• SSD
• external hard drive powered via USB (e.g., Seagate Slim, WD My Passport)
• external hard drive with its own power supply (e.g., via a powered USB hub, its own power supply/wall wart, or even an internal hard drive set into a powered SATA dock

Which of these would be most suitable for use of the Pi as a desktop replacement (email, Libreoffice, browsing, some basic picture editing but no video editing)?

Most inexpensive USB flash drives will be slow as an OS drive. They just aren't designed for the kind of I/O needed for OS use. SD cards have the same problem, but there are new "A1" class SD cards designed for faster random I/O and those work much better.

An SSD works surprisingly well, in spite of USB 2.0 port limits. There are many performance enhancing features on an SSD that cheap flash drives and SD cards don't have, which not only makes them faster, it also makes them more robust devices in terms of reliability and data integrity.

External hard drives powered by the Pi's USB ports may have trouble spinning up fast enough to be detected as a boot device before the boot loader times out. Some will work, but not all. There are quite a few here booting their Pi3 computers from USB powered hard drives, so it does work for some. The only way to know if it will work for you is to give it a try.

External hard drives with their own power, that are powered up before the Pi is booted, will usually work great.

Do note that the boot loader in the Raspberry Pi is rather simple, due to limited space for the code in the SoC, so there are some devices that are incompatible and simply won't work. This situation is supposed to have been improved with the new 3B+ and there should be fewer incompatible devices with that model.

Keeping the boot partition on an SD card and running the root OS from a USB device was the old-school way of doing things before USB boot was introduced with the Pi3B model. If you have one of the unlucky incompatible devices, you can often get it working by keeping /boot on SD. The /boot partition is treated as read-only except for firmware/kernel updates, so an SD card used in this manner is subject to very little wear.

So my recommendations are...

1. For simplicity with good performance, boot from one of the new "A1" class SD cards.
2. For the best overall performance, boot from a USB SSD drive.
3. If you need loads of storage, or need to record large amounts of data, go with a hard drive (preferably self-powered).

There's also no reason you cannot combine devices, like boot from an A1 SD card and use a hard drive for storage.

Woah. That is the most awesome thing ive seen all day. Would this work with a pi 2

If you have the newer Pi2B v1.2 you might be able to follow the procedure for the Pi3B and boot from USB. They use the same SoC, so in theory it should work, but I don't have one so I can't confirm it.

You can USB boot the older Pi1B+ and Pi2Bv1.1 by writing the latest Raspbian image to the USB drive directly (preferably using Etcher) and then copying just the bootcode.bin file from the USB drive's boot partition to a FAT32 formatted SD card. The Pi will execute bootcode.bin from the SD card, and that will boot the USB device. You must only have a single USB storage device connected for this to work reliably, because bootcode.bin will only attempt to boot the first USB drive it finds, and there is no way to guarantee that will be your intended boot device with multiple drives connected. This also works for the Pi3B, but not the new 3B+ model.

[techblogger911]

Hi,
Is it working well? i want to know first to make sure. Thanks

[PeterO]

You already asked....
viewtopic.php?f=63&t=210211&p=1298180#p1298180
PeterO

[cspan]

So my recommendations are...

1. For simplicity with good performance, boot from one of the new "A1" class SD cards.
2. For the best overall performance, boot from a USB SSD drive.
3. If you need loads of storage, or need to record large amounts of data, go with a hard drive (preferably self-powered).

There's also no reason you cannot combine devices, like boot from an A1 SD card and use a hard drive for storage.

Thanks much, HawaiianPi!

If you don't mind a follow up question: as I plan to use the Pi as an everyday desktop computer (really), would you advise against using microSD for booting? I've read that the nature of flash memory is not terribly well suited to the high volumes of reading and writing one might get through daily desktop (and internet browsing) use; that SSD drives compensate for this to a degree with wear-leveling technology ... but I don't know if that tech is also in microSD cards (I do happen to have an A1 Sandisk Ultra microSD) or in USB flash memory sticks.

Were it not for that concern, I'd happily run the OS off the microSD and use an external, non-powered HDD for storage [I already have two of these in rotation to backup my desktop files. I like keeping my data files separate from OS files anyway.] Then, if the card gets corrupted, I put a backup card in place and resume my work, files safe, OS files easily replaced.

Since I had assumed this was an issue - I was leaning toward eschewing flash-based memory for booting and OS anyway. I already own a powered SATA docking station for 2.5/3.5 internal HDD, so I figured I'd probably buy a new internal HD and start booting from that for my Raspbian desktop. [I do have some older drives ... 80GB, 160GB, but they're so old, I'm not sure I should rely on them. OTOH, if my own files aren't on them, so what, right? Just keep a clone of the boot disk somewhere?]