[BETA] Raspberry Pi boot from USB/NVMe

nerd · March 19, 2024, 3:47pm

Initial thoughts:

Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes. A physical sector size of 4096 bytes is not a problem, but a logical sector size of other than 512 bytes with a bootable vfat partition is.
Some proprietary firmware/software that this vendor uses needs the additional sector size for some fancy parity stuff.

Will need to park it until Move Speed USB arrive (3 pcs)

nerd · March 19, 2024, 4:26pm

As a test - can you remove pci=pcie_bus_safe from /boot/cmdline.txt and check?

naimnatnod · March 19, 2024, 4:37pm

How can I access/remove pci=pcie_bus_safe from /boot/cmdline.txt when I can’t boot it up from the Pi?

nerd · March 19, 2024, 4:50pm

The cmdline.txt is on boot vfat partition. Any system should see it.

naimnatnod · March 19, 2024, 5:00pm

How can I access to vfat partition? This is what I see on my Windows machine.

nerd · March 19, 2024, 5:03pm

It’s the smallest one - 738MB, however is shown as RAW.

If you have other Rpi or booted from SD Card we can check there.

naimnatnod · March 19, 2024, 5:06pm

I do have another RPi. Do you want me to boot from SD card (Volumio or Pi OS)?

nerd · March 19, 2024, 5:18pm

Yes please, once booted connect USB, connect and login with ssh or directly on console type

sudo fdisk -l

naimnatnod · March 19, 2024, 5:20pm

It shows logical/physical : 4096/4096 on the USB.

nerd · March 19, 2024, 5:23pm

I see.
What is the list of partitions?
We can try modify boot on USB and see it this makes any difference.

naimnatnod · March 19, 2024, 5:25pm

there are 3 partitions.

/dev/sda1 - FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/sda2 - Linux
/dev/sda3 - Linux

nerd · March 19, 2024, 5:31pm

Lets try the following:

sudo mkdir /tmp/usbboot

sudo mount /dev/sda1 /tmp/usbboot

Open cmdline.txt in editor

sudo nano /tmp/usbboot/cmdline.txt

Remove only pci=pcie_bus_safe from the boot parameters.

CTRL+O

CTRL+X

sudo sync

sudo umount /dev/sda1

and shutdown

sudo shutdown -h now

Test USB boot if there is a change in behaviour.

naimnatnod · March 19, 2024, 5:41pm

I got this error.

sudo mount /dev/sda1 /tmp/usbboot
mount: /tmp/usbboot: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sda1, missing codepage or helper program, or other error.
dmesg(1) may have more information after failed mount system call.

nerd · March 19, 2024, 5:46pm

Thank you Andy,

Lets wait for my stash to arrive.

naimnatnod · March 21, 2024, 11:05pm

I can confirm that the USB 3.2 Gen 2 from TeamGroup (the one on the left) works well with Volumio. The one on the right, MoveSpeed USB 3.2 Gen 2 DOES NOT work with Raspberry Pi because the block size is 4096 bytes while RPi supports only 512 bytes.

However, I really like the MoveSpeed because the built quality is way way better than the TeamGroup. MoveSpeed is metal and provides USB A & C. TeamGroup is all plastic and only USB A.

TeamGroup 256GB USB 3.2 Gen 2
Write - 228 MB/s
Read - 251 MB/s

Wheaten · March 21, 2024, 11:14pm

Also this one works pretty well. Tested on rPi4 and rPi5:

volumio@majority:~$ dd if=/dev/zero of=./TestingFile bs=100M count=10 oflag=direct                                                                    10+0 records in
10+0 records out
1048576000 bytes (1.0 GB, 1000 MiB) copied, 8.56867 s, 122 MB/s
volumio@majority:~$ dd if=./TestingFile of=/dev/zero bs=100M count=10 oflag=dsync
10+0 records in
10+0 records out
1048576000 bytes (1.0 GB, 1000 MiB) copied, 5.11019 s, 205 MB/s
volumio@majority:~$

naimnatnod · March 22, 2024, 12:09am

@Wheaten How did you measure the read speed? Is it the actual number or from the info from Amazon?

The one that I got (TeamGroup), advertise at 1000/800 MBs but the actual number is 228/251 MBs.

I use these commands to get the numbers:

For write speed - dd if=/dev/zero of=./TestingFile bs=100M count=10 oflag=direct

For read speed - dd if=./TestingFile of=/dev/zero bs=100M count=10 oflag=dsync

nerd · March 22, 2024, 4:17am

Using for development, builds, etc - actually, no matter what I throw at it and my personal favourite for all sorts, from pen-testing, throughout data storage, all way up to ESXi/Proxmox:

SKK SD301:

Speeds are similar if not the same as shown here:

Sizes from 500GB and up seem to prefer cold start on rPi4, meaning that reboot will not initialize the device.

Wheaten · March 22, 2024, 4:04pm

I don’t like your commands

Updated my post.

Stumbled upon this topic, If I have time I will test it.

naimnatnod · March 22, 2024, 4:17pm

Yours is actually better. Mine says up to 1000 MB/s but I got only 251 MB/s. However, on the 2nd run on read command, the speed is a little more than double to 580 MB/s.