Boot from Harddrive?

Skeeve · March 17, 2021 at 10:11 PM

Hi.

I've read about booting a Raspberry Pi from a hard drive.

I followed the steps for allowing boot from USB, changing the power limit for the usb drive and increasing the timeout.

Unfortunately my Raspberry won't boot from my 500GB Hard drive. Booting from a USB stick otoh works.

What can I do to troubleshhot my problem?

ghtester · March 18, 2021 at 1:01 AM

The important details regarding to your HW type / setup are missing so it's hard to say.

But make sure your HDD has enough power. Connect it through USB HUB with external power supply as RPi's USB ports have limited output current which might not be sufficient for most HDDs.

Skeeve · March 18, 2021 at 7:01 AM

I have, according to cpuinfo: Raspberry Pi 3 Model B Rev 1.2

The LED on the drive lights up. I can also access it when I connect it after booting LibreElec from a usb stick.

**chewitt** · March 18, 2021 at 7:55 AM Official Post

USB mass storage boot - Raspberry Pi Documentation

RPi3B needs to have USB boot enabled in firmware first before it can boot from a USB device. Read and follow the links on ^ that page.

Skeeve · March 18, 2021 at 7:57 AM

Quote from Skeeve

Hi.
I've read about booting a Raspberry Pi from a hard drive.
I followed the steps for allowing boot from USB, changing the power limit for the usb drive and increasing the timeout.
Unfortunately my Raspberry won't boot from my 500GB Hard drive. Booting from a USB stick otoh works.
What can I do to troubleshhot my problem?

You did see that ^^?

I already boot from USB stick fine.

**chewitt** · March 18, 2021 at 8:24 AM Official Post

You might need to use a USB drive with external power rather than relying on a USB hub to power it correctly. I'll also point out that there is nothing wrong with booting from an SD card. So perhaps do a hybrid where /flash is on SD and /storage is on the USB drive.