By default, the Raspberry Pi boots the operating system only from the micro SD card, which has a theoretical maximum bandwidth of just 50 Mbps on the Raspberry Pi 4 and 25 Mbps on previous models. Using an SSD or USB pen drive can dramatically speed up the performance of the device, but it has not been so far that with a firmware update it can be done, so here we are going to give you a step-by-step guide to start the Raspberry Pi 4 from USB, with an SSD or pen drive.
In tests, speeds of up to 140 MB / s read and 208 MB / s write were achieved using a USB-connected SSD to a Raspberry 4, speeds tremendously higher than what the device supports using the micro SD card . Likewise, a USB 3.0 pen drive can be used instead of an SSD, and this will also greatly speed up the storage performance of the device as there are very cheap drives that far exceed 100MB / s.
Let’s see how to do it.
How to make the Raspberry Pi 4 boot from an SSD or USB pen drive
The first thing you should do is start the Raspberry Pi from the micro SD in the normal way, preferably with the Raspbian operating system. Then it is necessary to update the operating system, and for this enter the following commands:
sudo apt update
sudo apt full-upgrade
When the process ends you have to edit a file to allow you to install this firmware update that we are talking about, since it is a beta firmware. Enter the following command:
sudo nano / etc / default / rpi-eeprom-update
In the editor, change the value “critical” to “beta” and press CTRL + X to exit (press Y when asked if you want to save the changes to save them).
Once this is done, the beta bootloader must be installed and for this you must enter the following command:
sudo rpi-eeprom-update -d -f /lib/firmware/raspberrypi/bootloader/beta/pieeprom-2020-05-15.bin
This process may fail if newer firmware has been released, in which case you should check the date. To do this, just go to the / lib / firmware / raspberrypi / bootloader / beta / directory and check the name of the pieeprom file.
After doing this, you should restart the Raspberry Pi, and when it reboots, check that it has been installed correctly with the following command:
vcgencmd bootloader_version
You should see that the firmware date matches the one we installed in the previous step, before restarting.
If everything is correct, now you should either copy all the contents of your micro SD with Raspbian to the SSD or USB pen drive you want to use, or mount a new image of the operating system on it. In Raspbian you have an application called “SD Copier” for it.
Now you have to do a little “trick” so that everything works well, and for this, it is recommended to use a Windows PC where you can connect the SSD or USB drive that you want to use later on the Raspberry.
Start by downloading the complete file of the firmware update , unzip it somewhere on your PC, and what you should do now is go into the / boot directory and copy all the files with the * .dat and * .elf extension to the partition. “boot” of the USB device, overwriting the existing ones.
Now with the Raspberry Pi 4 turned off, remove the micro SD card and connect the SSD or USB pen drive that we have been modifying. If everything went well, you should start the operating system normally and without having to touch anything else.
Posible problems
Keep one thing in mind, and that is that the power delivered by the Raspberry’s USB ports is very limited. Many users encounter problems such as the operating system booting well but no USB-connected peripherals working (and they blame this blatantly on the fact that the USB power is not enough for more). If this is your case, it is recommended to use, for example, a docking for the SSD that has external power and that does not need to take power from the USB port itself.
