6 ms·

I'm booting my Raspberry Pi 4 from a USB SSD

67 points by geerlingguy 6y ago

miro-siagi 6y ago
Awesome! Do you think this is feasible also for Raspberry Pi 3B?
- dividuum 6y ago
  Yes. The Pi3 could always boot from USB once you enable[1] it. The difference with the Pi4 is that it's initial boot eeprom is now updatable. The first release didn't include the option for USB booting. It has just recently been added [2]. [1] https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberrypi/bootmodes/msd.md https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberry... [2] https://github.com/raspberrypi/rpi-eeprom/blob/master/firmware/release-notes.md#2020-05-15-add-pieeprom-2020-05-15-beta-with-usb-boot https://github.com/raspberrypi/rpi-eeprom/blob/master/firmwa...
  - geerlingguy 6y ago
    The other major difference is the Pi 4 has USB 3.0 and the network interface is not on the same bus. So, while the 3/3+ also benefit from USB boot, the 4 can benefit quite a bit further!
- ObsoleteNerd 6y ago
  Earlier Pis could already run off USB drives, it’s just that they released the Pi4 before they had USB boot in the firmware so it didn’t work, but now it does.
yummypaint 6y ago
Excellent. The biggest obstacle ive had to using Pis for practical things is that the memory cards eventually go bad. Looking forward to seeing this in the main release.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- chopin 6y ago
  Putting /var/log/ somewhere else mitigates this.
  - lmilcin 6y ago
    Couple more things to remember: - don't use swap - make sure you have noatime on all your filesystems - identify other folders with frequently changing data (/tmp, $HOME/tmp, etc.) and also make sure you keep them in memory - you can use NFS for many of these things if that is possible
    - uwuwuwu 6y ago
      Something I never understand: Why is this not the default? So many people struggle with the same stuff over and over again, yet, there's no mechanism in Linux distros to package default settings for a use case.
      - lmilcin 6y ago
        What is right for Raspberry Pi might not be right for a desktop might not be right for a server. Typically things are geared for desktop users who have not much idea what they are doing and everybody else is expected to understand and configure to their needs. Nowadays distributions started preparing separate profiles (workstation, desktop, embedded, etc.) that save a little bit of work. noatime is a default for most distributions but a person that does install on Raspberry Pi might be configuring filesystem manually and not be aware to put it there. Swap is very tempting to have on the Pi but is going to kill the card in a hurry.
      - kortex 6y ago
        You want a stable, easy-to-use platform. Setting /var/log to something other than the main disk risks all kinds of difficult to diagnose problems. If that means burning through SD cards, so be it. It's relatively easy to mod it to write elsewhere, that's exactly the purpose of user customization. What they ought to do is put an easy way to set that in `raspi-config`
ajflores1604 6y ago
Does anyone know if its theoretically possible to run a cluster of Pi's off of the same external ssd at the same time? I'd like for say 4 Pi's to get a speed boost of not running off microSD, but I also don't want to shell out for 4 separate hard drives. I've looked in the past and have only found links to partitioning the drive so that it could be used when moving from one pi to another. But nothing about using it concurrently. I'm not even sure what this would look like physically. Like if a hub exists that could pass traffic to a single drive connected on the other side. Or how the drive would internally separate the writes. But im curious if something like this has been done before. Or why it couldn't be done
- zamadatix 6y ago
  Networked storage but that won't be as fast as native drives.
  - lmilcin 6y ago
    I tend to disagree. It will depend on the network and the storage but it is not uncommon for network storage to actually be faster than local flash card. At home I have couple of older laptops my kids use for various things. I have installed linux on them and configured to boot over wifi and it actually sped up these machines significantly. I would not advise for everybody to do this, though. The setup is complex (there is no built in support in any distro and you are pretty much on your own) and you need excellent wifi coverage (I have no less than 5 5GHz access points to cover the area densely). One thing flash card will be difficult to beat is random small accesses if the only thing you care about is latency and not throughput.
    - zamadatix 6y ago
      It's a gigabit network adapter. Ignoring the extra CPU overhead, latency, etc. that alone limits storage to less than SATA 1 speeds. UASP drives on the USB 3 port can push near SATA 3 speeds with lower latency and less CPU overhead.
- schlopper 6y ago
kingosticks 6y ago
Really great article and very helpful, but where does the 8x faster for writes come from? I make it 6.2x.
- geerlingguy 6y ago
  Oops! My math must've been a bit broken. I'll update that part.
  - kingosticks 6y ago
    Thanks! I tried to leave a comment on the article itself but it said I was blacklisted (first time visitor so I think something might be going wrong there).
    - geerlingguy 6y ago
      D'oh; I'm still trying to get my spam settings fixed on the site, after a major upgrade a couple weeks ago. Sorry about that.
peter_d_sherman 6y ago
>"The results really speak for themselves. For sequential operations, using a USB SSD is 3-4x faster than using a microSD card. And for random access, random reads are a bit faster, but writes are about 6x faster!"

67 points by geerlingguy 6y ago

miro-siagi 6y ago

Awesome! Do you think this is feasible also for Raspberry Pi 3B?

dividuum 6y ago
Yes. The Pi3 could always boot from USB once you enable[1] it. The difference with the Pi4 is that it's initial boot eeprom is now updatable. The first release didn't include the option for USB booting. It has just recently been added [2]. [1] https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberrypi/bootmodes/msd.md https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberry... [2] https://github.com/raspberrypi/rpi-eeprom/blob/master/firmware/release-notes.md#2020-05-15-add-pieeprom-2020-05-15-beta-with-usb-boot https://github.com/raspberrypi/rpi-eeprom/blob/master/firmwa...
- geerlingguy 6y ago
  The other major difference is the Pi 4 has USB 3.0 and the network interface is not on the same bus. So, while the 3/3+ also benefit from USB boot, the 4 can benefit quite a bit further!
ObsoleteNerd 6y ago
Earlier Pis could already run off USB drives, it’s just that they released the Pi4 before they had USB boot in the firmware so it didn’t work, but now it does.

yummypaint 6y ago

Excellent. The biggest obstacle ive had to using Pis for practical things is that the memory cards eventually go bad. Looking forward to seeing this in the main release.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
chopin 6y ago
Putting /var/log/ somewhere else mitigates this.
- lmilcin 6y ago
  Couple more things to remember: - don't use swap - make sure you have noatime on all your filesystems - identify other folders with frequently changing data (/tmp, $HOME/tmp, etc.) and also make sure you keep them in memory - you can use NFS for many of these things if that is possible
  - uwuwuwu 6y ago
    Something I never understand: Why is this not the default? So many people struggle with the same stuff over and over again, yet, there's no mechanism in Linux distros to package default settings for a use case.
    - lmilcin 6y ago
      What is right for Raspberry Pi might not be right for a desktop might not be right for a server. Typically things are geared for desktop users who have not much idea what they are doing and everybody else is expected to understand and configure to their needs. Nowadays distributions started preparing separate profiles (workstation, desktop, embedded, etc.) that save a little bit of work. noatime is a default for most distributions but a person that does install on Raspberry Pi might be configuring filesystem manually and not be aware to put it there. Swap is very tempting to have on the Pi but is going to kill the card in a hurry.
    - kortex 6y ago
      You want a stable, easy-to-use platform. Setting /var/log to something other than the main disk risks all kinds of difficult to diagnose problems. If that means burning through SD cards, so be it. It's relatively easy to mod it to write elsewhere, that's exactly the purpose of user customization. What they ought to do is put an easy way to set that in `raspi-config`

ajflores1604 6y ago

Does anyone know if its theoretically possible to run a cluster of Pi's off of the same external ssd at the same time? I'd like for say 4 Pi's to get a speed boost of not running off microSD, but I also don't want to shell out for 4 separate hard drives. I've looked in the past and have only found links to partitioning the drive so that it could be used when moving from one pi to another. But nothing about using it concurrently. I'm not even sure what this would look like physically. Like if a hub exists that could pass traffic to a single drive connected on the other side. Or how the drive would internally separate the writes. But im curious if something like this has been done before. Or why it couldn't be done

zamadatix 6y ago
Networked storage but that won't be as fast as native drives.
- lmilcin 6y ago
  I tend to disagree. It will depend on the network and the storage but it is not uncommon for network storage to actually be faster than local flash card. At home I have couple of older laptops my kids use for various things. I have installed linux on them and configured to boot over wifi and it actually sped up these machines significantly. I would not advise for everybody to do this, though. The setup is complex (there is no built in support in any distro and you are pretty much on your own) and you need excellent wifi coverage (I have no less than 5 5GHz access points to cover the area densely). One thing flash card will be difficult to beat is random small accesses if the only thing you care about is latency and not throughput.
  - zamadatix 6y ago
    It's a gigabit network adapter. Ignoring the extra CPU overhead, latency, etc. that alone limits storage to less than SATA 1 speeds. UASP drives on the USB 3 port can push near SATA 3 speeds with lower latency and less CPU overhead.
schlopper 6y ago

kingosticks 6y ago

Really great article and very helpful, but where does the 8x faster for writes come from? I make it 6.2x.

geerlingguy 6y ago
Oops! My math must've been a bit broken. I'll update that part.
- kingosticks 6y ago
  Thanks! I tried to leave a comment on the article itself but it said I was blacklisted (first time visitor so I think something might be going wrong there).
  - geerlingguy 6y ago
    D'oh; I'm still trying to get my spam settings fixed on the site, after a major upgrade a couple weeks ago. Sorry about that.

peter_d_sherman 6y ago

>"The results really speak for themselves. For sequential operations, using a USB SSD is 3-4x faster than using a microSD card. And for random access, random reads are a bit faster, but writes are about 6x faster!"