Subj : Issue with SSDs over USB boot
To   : All
From : paulie420
Date : Mon Sep 21 2020 09:09:29

So I got a NesPi case for my Pi 4 that the BBS lives on. It is a mini-NES
console, and the 'carts' hold an SSD hard drive. You can switch carts and
boot a new Pi system over USB.

Great, right? Well...

I copied my BBS SDcard over to the SSD using Raspberry Pi OS SD Card Copy.
(You can also DD it, but you know that you Linux rockstar...) I used the
newly released update to raspi-config to turn on USB Booting, which is now
located under the Boot menu in raspi-config. (Cool!!)

However, upon booting with no SDcard directly thru the USB SSD I got tons os
systemctl FAILS in the boot process and was left with either a black screen
and a cursor in the upper left, or it sometimes dropping me a a CLI linux
login prompt. (And, login was limited - the system wasn't loading correctly
at all.)

Anyway, after tons of research and pulling out my hair I found this on the
RaspberryPi.org forums:

STICKY: If you have a Raspberry Pi 4 and are getting bad speeds transferring
data to/from USB3.0 SSDs, read this
https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=245931

So it seems that certain, low quality, Sata to USB connectors are having
issues with UAS and either really low data speeds - or not wanting to boot AT
ALL... theres a 'USB quirks' work-around that disables UAS and allows these
connectors to... connect correctly. You have to edit the cmdline.txt in
/boot... So I did...

And it boots right into my GUI as normal. I'm getting what I think are OK
speeds; 270,000 sequantials 5500reads 5000writes... 

But I have to say I can't recommend the NesPi 4 case any more for your
Raspberry Pi 4!! It's an awesome little case, and I figured I could have
different 'NES carts' with RPi systems loaded on each SSD. But why the heck
would they use a Sata to USB cable that isn't even capable of booting a
system!?! I think two reasons; cost, they're trying to get it as cheap as
possible... and, the USB boot just now went non-beta; so I bet they hadn't
tested that part of it as you had to update eeprom manually before... I bet
they just tested the mass-storage part and shipped their product.

Anyway, if yer excited about USB boot and try it and have issues, start here.
It will save you a bunch of time.

Cheers... 20 For Beers BBS is now running on a 1TB SSD HDD... but I'll be
switching out this case/SATA to USB connector to get speeds up.



|07p|15AULIE|1142|07o
|08.........

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A45 2020/02/18 (Raspberry Pi/32)
 * Origin: 2o fOr beeRS bbs>>>20ForBeers.com:1337 (1337:3/129)

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