News How to Boot Raspberry Pi 4 From a USB SSD or Flash Drive

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Many failed attempts until I followed this article. Instead of using beta bootloader, I'm using stable from 2020-09-03. My Pi4 has USB keyboard and mouse on USB2 and "official" 7" Pi touchscreen. I have SSD USB drive. At long last I see everything proceeding as expected - and then suddenly a console message (on the 7" screen) that "USB2-Port2 cannot enable". I discover that the keyboard is alive, but not the mouse. I am able to type things, but it does not recognize sudo commands. It did reboot with CTRL-ALT-DEL! Regardless, I don't know what to do about this. Going back to SD card, all is well.
Also I thought maybe I'll try recovery mode, so I hold down SHIFT while rebooting with USB and that fails, because it's not a NOOB disk. But now I'm stuck in this failure mode every time I try to reboot into the USB drive. Once again, must go back to SD card.
Can anyone suggest to me what is wrong? It seems clear to me that there's really not a problem with USB2-Port2. So what is it?
 
My problem with these instructions is that I follow them to the letter and when running raspi-config I do not get the same options. The version of raspi-config when I run it is 1.1 and the documented procedure shows 1.4. I have downloaded and installed the latest version off the rasberrypi.org web site (Released: 2020-08-20). What am I missing? Also I observed that my SSD is formated exFAT and the SD cards are formatted FAT32. Is an additional step required (assuming I can get that far) to reformat the SSD?
 
glenn_n said:
Many failed attempts until I followed this article. Instead of using beta bootloader, I'm using stable from 2020-09-03. My Pi4 has USB keyboard and mouse on USB2 and "official" 7" Pi touchscreen. I have SSD USB drive. At long last I see everything proceeding as expected - and then suddenly a console message (on the 7" screen) that "USB2-Port2 cannot enable". I discover that the keyboard is alive, but not the mouse. I am able to type things, but it does not recognize sudo commands. It did reboot with CTRL-ALT-DEL! Regardless, I don't know what to do about this. Going back to SD card, all is well.
Also I thought maybe I'll try recovery mode, so I hold down SHIFT while rebooting with USB and that fails, because it's not a NOOB disk. But now I'm stuck in this failure mode every time I try to reboot into the USB drive. Once again, must go back to SD card.
Can anyone suggest to me what is wrong? It seems clear to me that there's really not a problem with USB2-Port2. So what is it?
Click to expand...
SOLVED - I started fresh with an empty SD and noticed that RaspberryPi.org did not suggest a NOOB install, but instead pushed Raspberry Pi OS - I've never noticed that before! After starting new SD card, I finally got to the step about using "SD Card Copy" and when I copied to SSD, it created only 2 partitions - all my previous attempts had created FIVE partitions.
And yes, I was then able to boot with SSD on USB3.
Rereading the comments here, I realized that I had started (months ago) with a NOOB install that came from CanaKit. So there's a lesson for me and you - don't use NOOB!
 
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Just wanted to comment in case it helps the other newbies out there - I am running on a Raspberry Pi 4 8GB and I couldn't seem to get my SSD booting correctly even though I followed the instructions exactly, what worked for me is in #2, I did
sudo apt update
sudo apt full-upgrade
Click to expand...
but did not do the below
sudo rpi-update
Click to expand...

then my SSD booted fine.

Following also previous comment of a poster here, the options in the boot menu moved around a bit but very straightforward

Just followed the instruction, and there needs to be a change to the raspi-config section - 1st Nov the latest raspi-config has changed and the boot option is not 3 any more, it's part of the menu 6 - Advanced Options - "a6 - Boot Order", "a7 - Boot Rom Version"
Click to expand...
 
Thanks for this guide. Just a heads up to say that the description of options and the screenshots of the raspi-config steps are out of date. The required options are now 6 - Advanced options from the main menu, and A6 and A7 on that menu.

Also, is there a command line equivalent of the SD card copier application? In my case I run the Pi headless, and it's running the minimal Raspberry Pi OS Lite which doesn't provide a GUI.
 
MarkEScott said:
Thanks for this guide. Just a heads up to say that the description of options and the screenshots of the raspi-config steps are out of date. The required options are now 6 - Advanced options from the main menu, and A6 and A7 on that menu.

Also, is there a command line equivalent of the SD card copier application? In my case I run the Pi headless, and it's running the minimal Raspberry Pi OS Lite which doesn't provide a GUI.
Click to expand...

Here
https://github.com/billw2/rpi-clone
This covers about everything. Detailed instructions on the github page.
This is also perfect for anyone trying to do more than set up a fresh disk, such as multiple partitions without trashing them all.
Also great as a daily cron job to clone your system back to the onboard sd slot.
Should be in everyones pi toolbox
 
onemanband said:
Here
https://github.com/billw2/rpi-clone
This covers about everything. Detailed instructions on the github page.
This is also perfect for anyone trying to do more than set up a fresh disk, such as multiple partitions without trashing them all.
Also great as a daily cron job to clone your system back to the onboard sd slot.
Should be in everyones pi toolbox
Click to expand...
Oh, and the 2.4ghz interference on usb3-sata protocol is a thing. Completely knocked out my wifi until I re routed the cable.
 
Although the ADATA Model ED600 (AED600U31-CBK) 2.5" SSD housings work great when used with my MacBook Air and Pro, it did not work as a boot drive for this project and my Raspberry Pi 4.

BUT - as Tom's article mentioned - all seems great with the inexpensive StarTech USB32SAT3CB cable!

Clint Bradford
 
Hi.
I now boot the RPI 4 from USB. What is the best way to make a backup from the RPI4? Just backup Home or backup the whole USB stick to an image?
 
How long is the bootloader step supposed to take? My screen is red and eventually just goes to black because of a lack of input (sleep mode). Haven't seen it turn green yet.
 
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