The new Raspberry Pi 4 bootloader has finally come out of beta and made it’s way into the official latest Raspbian! This has been long awaited since when the Raspberry Pi 4 was released it had no native support for booting from USB / Network but it was promised right from the start it would get it through a later update.
This guide will show how to configure the new bootloader and set up your Pi to boot from USB devices as well as the other boot options now available within the Raspberry Pi 4 bootloader.
The Samsung 980 Pro (NVMe) is a professional grade SSD and one of the fastest in the world. The Samsung NVMe drives have been at the top of this category for a long time and are well trusted for both their performance and reliability / long life.
The ICY BOX is basically a giant heatsink that you mount a high performance M.2 NVMe drive inside of. This enclosure is really fast but requires a powered USB hub. Not even the 3.5A adapter can reliably power it! The enclosure works well and will physically feel warm to the touch as it is pulling the heat off your NVMe drive!
The Kingston A400 has been a great drive to use with the Pi for years. It’s reliable, widely available around the world, has low power requirements and performs very well. It’s also very affordable. This drive has been benchmarked over 1000 times at pibenchmarks.com and is the #1 most popular SSD among the Pi community!
The USB 3.1 variant of the StarTech 2.5″ SATA adapter works well with the Pi 4. The USB 3.0 variant doesn’t have firmware updates available and is not recommended.
The SanDisk Extreme A1-A2 SD card has the best scoring SD card on pibenchmarks.com for years and is second in popularity only to the SanDisk Ultra (often included in combo kits). The application class (A1) means random I/O speeds (very important when running an OS) have to meet a higher standard. There’s no benefit on the Pi for A2 right now so get whichever is cheaper/available.
You may use other types of drives with the Pi such as M.2 SATA to USB 3.0 and m-SATA to USB 3.0. Here’s some adapters I’ve used for those types of drives:
UGREEN M+B Key M.2 Enclosure
The UGREEN M+B enclosure is a great enclosure for the Pi for M.2 SATA 2280 NGFF drives. It supports both B-key and M-key drives. Does not support newer NVMe drives. As with other types of enclosures it requires more power than other options!
The VL716 mSATA enclosure lets you connect micro SATA drives to the Pi. These drives are an older type of SSD (usually seen in laptops) predating the M.2 slot but are still widely available and perform extremely well!
Another option for M.2 SATA (not NVMe) is to use the Argon One Pi case:
Argon ONE Pi 4 M.2 Case
The Argon ONE M.2 is a M.2 SATA Pi 4 case / storage solution. With the case and M.2 SATA expansion board you can completely enclosure your Pi 4 and have a built in M.2 slot! The M.2 SATA board is sometimes sold separately from the case itself and can be used as well. Does not support NVMe, this is for SATA M.2 drives only!
Power can be a serious problem with these drives. We are learning from the comments that you are especially likely to run into power issues with NVMe enclosures. A powered USB hub or a power adapter that puts out 3.5A comes not only just strongly recommended, it may actually be required that you choose one option or the other for your drive to function.
The specific requirements of how much power you’ll need depend on the adapter/enclosure and the model of your drive itself. As a very rough guideline, older models of drives tend to use more power than newer models of drives. 3.5″ form factor drives also use more power than 2.5″ drives. The earliest SSD models like first and second generation models are also well understood to use significantly more power than newer models. This is due to changes and improvements in technology over the years and even using different more efficient memory like 3D NAND. Some super high end performance drives will consume more power as well.
Here’s the current recommendations based on everyone’s comments combined with stuff I’ve personally used with the Pi:
CanaKit 3.5A Power Adapter
The CanaKit 3.5A adapter has an extra half an amp (500 mA) of capacity to give some breathing room to your accessories. This is bigger than the official Pi power supply which provides 3.0A.
The Sabrent powered USB hub delivers a whopping 2.5A of dedicated power for your USB attached devices. This is almost as much as the Pi adapter itself is rated for (3.0A). It will easily power the most thirsty of setups such as NVMe enclosures.
Note: Make sure Amazon doesn’t try to take you to the non-powered version and that it’s the one with the AC adapter that plugs in to provide extra power
The new USB-C 3.1 Type A version of the Sabrent adapter is reported as working in the comments by UEF. DO NOT get the USB 3.0 version as that one is below on the naughty list and won’t work!
Make absolutely sure it’s the 10Gbps USB 3.1 Gen 2 version. There is another one that looks identical that is a USB 3.1 Gen 2 6Gbps that will not work. Confirmed working by RRT in the comments.
It’s bold. It’s beautiful. It’s also confirmed working by TADRACKET and Steve B. However, be warned, it takes a *lot* of power! Steve B. reports that even with the oversized 3.5A CanaKit adapter* it does not work. If you have the standard 3.0 adapter you can be practically certain it won’t power this enclosure. Does work with a powered USB hub*.
Returning legendary commentary Frank Meyer reports: Does not work with a 3.0A power adapter (also reported by TTE). It’s not enough power for this enclosure. Does work with a powered USB hub*.
M.Yusuf has given the first ever report of a working Orico adapter! Make sure it’s the USB 3.1 Gen 2 version that says “Support UASP for NVMe SSD”. This is the way.
Canakit has been making very reliable power supplies for several Pi generations now. Using a 3.5A power supply will give enough extra power for your Pi to power the drive without causing instability
Reported as working by JeffG but with an ugly messy appearance
Known Working Adapters
Known Problematic Adapters (Naughty List)
Here is a list of common USB adapters that are known to have problems with the Raspberry Pi 4. You can get some of these adapters working by using quirks mode (see the “Fix (some) USB Adapter Problems Using Quirks” section below).
Only works in the USB 2.0 ports. Will not boot in a USB 3.0 port. I have two of these and can confirm they don’t work. RIP to Sabrent, our previous king of the Pi 3 era of adapters.
Despite earlier reports as working Ryan and one other have reported this adapter does not work unless you enable quirks mode! Don’t make Ryan’s sacrifice in vain and avoid this one.
Extremely cheap adapter from AliExpress — MADATALIEXPRESS bought 5 of them and none worked, PPCM had one working, very unreliable and slow when it does work, not recommended even if you get lucky!
To edit the bootloader configuration you should have a copy of Raspbian on a SD card. Right now support in third party operating systems to do anything with the new Raspberry Pi 4’s firmware or bootloader is very limited / nonexistent. You can use a third party operating system later once you set the boot mode, but to actually make these changes we will use official Raspbian.
First make sure that you have the absolute latest updates and firmware for the Pi. To upgrade all your packages and firmware to the latest version use the following command:
sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade -y
Once the update has completed restart your Pi with a sudo reboot command to apply the latest firmware / kernel updates.
Verify EEPROM Bootloader is up to date
We can check if your Pi’s bootloader firmware is up to date with the following command:
sudo rpi-eeprom-update
If your Raspbian is *very* out of date you may not have this utility and can install it using:
sudo apt install rpi-eeprom
The output from rpi-eeprom-update will look like this if you are not up to date:
BCM2711 detected
VL805 firmware in bootloader EEPROM
*** UPDATE AVAILABLE ***
BOOTLOADER: update available
CURRENT: Thu 3 Sep 12:11:43 UTC 2020 (1599135103)
LATEST: Tue 24 Nov 15:08:04 UTC 2020 (1606230484)
FW DIR: /lib/firmware/raspberrypi/bootloader/beta
VL805: up-to-date
CURRENT: 000138a1
LATEST: 000138a1
If it says any updates are available they be installed manually by adding ‘-a’ to the end of our previous command like this:
sudo rpi-eeprom-update -a
After the updates finish installing restart your Pi as firmware updates will not be applied until after a reboot. Now if you run rpi-eeprom-update to check for updates again it should say you are on the latest and up to date!
Verify Power Supply Size (3.5A strongly recommended)
Check your Raspberry Pi’s power supply size and make sure it is delivering at least 3.5A. There are a lot of USB C adapters for the Raspberry Pi that are only 3.0A. These will typically work fine, until you plug in something like a SSD which draws power from the Pi and there is nothing left to give.
Most SSDs are quite power efficient but HDDs draw significantly more. Older generations of SSDs used quite a bit more power than newer ones as well. If you are using an older drive or a drive that you know is power hungry you need to pay extra attention to having a quality power source with plenty of capacity.
A good alternative option to relying on the Pi to power the drive is using a powered USB hub* so your drive doesn’t need to draw power from the Pi’s limited power budget. Make sure you get one that is compatible with the Pi as some powered USB hubs won’t work properly with it so check the reviews and do your research to make sure people are using it successfully with the Pi.
Image your bootable drive (your SSD / HDD / USB Flash Drive / etc.) the same way you imaged your micro SD card. You write the image of the operating system you want to run to the disk with Etcher / Win32DiskImager / however you normally would write one.
Once this is finished we are ready to edit the bootloader configuration to tell it to boot to our drive instead of the built in microSD slot.
If you’ve completed the prerequisites you are now ready to edit your Raspberry Pi’s bootloader configuration to tell the Pi to boot from a specified device instead of the built in microSD slot. To edit the bootloader configuration use the following command:
Our target is the BOOT_ORDER parameter in bold above. It is 0x1 in firmware versions up until 2020-05-150 and was changed to 0xf41 (try SD card first, then boot from USB if that fails) in newer versions after that. Here are the different configuration options for the BOOT_ORDER parameter (from Raspberry Pi documentation):
Stop and display error pattern (since 2020-09-03). A power cycle is required to exit this state.
0xf
RESTART
Start again with the first boot order field. (since 2020-09-03)
Raspberry Pi 4 USB BOOT_ORDER Options
The configuration option we want is USB mass storage device boot or option 0x4. We can use this option by itself or combine it with other options in the table placed in the order we want the Pi to try to boot from. To understand how to do this, let’s examine the default Raspberry Pi OS value of 0xf14. The values are read from right to left so this value means it will try USB booting first and then fall back to SD storage next.
If you want to leave the SD card and the “restart on failure” fallback options in place you can change it to 0xf14 (remember, the order is from right to left). Go ahead and use your arrow keys to navigate to the BOOT_ORDER line and change it 0x4 or 0xf14 so it reads:
BOOT_ORDER=0x4
or
BOOT_ORDER=0xf14 (to enable falling back to SD card if USB boot fails)
This translates to attempt to boot from USB mass storage first. If that fails, try to boot from SD card. If that fails, start over from step 1 and try again (back to USB mass storage). As another example, if you wanted to add booting from the network you could add the 0x2 value from the table for the “NETWORK” option and make it the final BOOT_ORDER value 0xf124. If you wanted to change the order so that the network boots first instead you could reorder it to 0xf142.
Choose the appropriate BOOT_ORDER you would like and use your arrow keys to move down to the BOOT_ORDER line. Change the line and press Control+X and then ‘y’ to save your changes. Make sure you have your boot device we set up in the prerequisites section plugged into one of the blueUSB ports as these ports are USB 3.0 and the black USB ports are USB 2.0 (slower). Now restart the Pi.
If all went well the Pi will immediately boot up from your boot device instead of the SD card!
Help, something went wrong!
Try Booting from SD card
Generally if the Pi fails to boot from the USB device it will fall back to booting from the SD card. If the Pi didn’t boot after making the change try unplugging your USB device and just booting from the SD card again by removing power from the Pi and plugging it back in again.
If the device is booting fine from the SD card but not from the external drive double check that you have a compatible adapter and that the drive was imaged correctly. Plug it into a PC and make sure it has the files on it and perhaps try giving it a clean image again just in case something went wrong with imaging the first time.
Verify rpi-eeprom-config configuration
Make sure your changes that we made earlier actually stuck by verifying the configuration using the command:
sudo -E rpi-eeprom-config --edit
and verify that the BOOT_ORDER=0x1 line is changed to BOOT_ORDER=0x4.
Restore Bootloader to Defaults
If things are *really* broken and the Pi will not boot at all with your SD card or otherwise then you may need to restore the bootloader back to defaults.
To do this we need to prepare a SD card with the Raspberry Pi 4 EEPROM boot recovery tool. The easiest way to do this is to use the official Raspberry Pi Imager tool from the Raspberry Pi foundation to prepare the recovery image.
Here is how we create the recovery image inside the utility. Choose the “Misc utility images” category as shown below:
Raspberry Pi Imager Step #1
Next choose the “Raspberry Pi 4 EEPROM boot recovery” option:
Raspberry Pi Imager Step #2
Next choose your SD card and then choose “Write”. Now unplug your Pi and put in the newly prepared SD card. Connect the power and let it boot. This will restore your bootloader to defaults. You should see a continuous rapid green blinking light. You may now disconnect the power and put your original SD card back / reinstall Raspbian and boot the Pi normally!
The beta firmware released since the original USB mass storage device support launched contains a bunch of fixes related to USB mass storage devices and USB booting. The downside is the beta firmware is not as well tested so you shouldn’t install it unless you are doing it to fix a specific issue addressed in those updates.
To switch to the beta channel edit the configuration file with the following command:
sudo nano /etc/default/rpi-eeprom-update
Change the line FIRMWARE_RELEASE_STATUS=”critical” (sometimes it can be “stable”) to:
FIRMWARE_RELEASE_STATUS="beta"
Now press Ctrl+X and then ‘y’ to save our changes in nano. Now execute a Pi firmware update using:
sudo rpi-eeprom-update -a
The updater will tell you whether updates were applied or not. Now do a full reboot of your Pi as the firmware updates won’t be applied until you do! If you want to switch back to normal firmware simply change the configuration back to “stable” or “critical”.
Verify Drive Performance
You can make sure everything is running correctly (and as fast as it should be) by running my quick storage benchmark. You can run the benchmark with the following one-liner:
This will give you a score you can compare to the other Raspberry Pi Storage Benchmark results and make sure that you are getting an equivalent speed to your peers with the same device!
Fix (some) USB Adapter Problems Using Quirks
Some of the very common adapters on the naughty list above (such as the Sabrent) can be made to work by using USB quirks to disable UAS mode on the drive. This lowers performance, but it’s still much faster than a SD card and your adapter won’t go to waste.
To find out the quirks we need to find the device ID string for your adapter and then add an entry to cmdline.txt telling the kernel to apply them on boot.
Find Your Adapter
To apply the quirks we first need to get the adapter id. We will use the sudo lsusb command:
$ sudo lsusb
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 174c:55aa ASMedia Technology Inc. Name: ASM1051E SATA 6Gb/s bridge, ASM1053E SATA 6Gb/s bridge, ASM1153 SATA 3Gb/s bridge, ASM1153E SATA 6Gb/s bridge
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 2109:3431 VIA Labs, Inc. Hub
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
On line 2 we can see my ASM1051E SATA 6Gb/s bridge adapter (it’s the known working StarTech.com 2.5″ SATA to USB 3.1* adapter). You will see something very similar to mine when you run the command and it shouldn’t be too hard to figure out which device it is. If you need more information add a -v switch to make the command sudo lsusb -v. This can sometimes add some additional details to make it easier to figure out which one is your adapter.
If you’re still not sure, we have another command that between the two that can narrow things down. Type / paste the following:
sudo dmesg | grep usb
[0.828535] usb usb3: New USB device found, idVendor=1d6b, idProduct=0002, bcdDevice= 4.19
[0.828568] usb usb3: New USB device strings: Mfr=3, Product=2, SerialNumber=1
[0.828597] usb usb3: Product: DWC OTG Controller
[0.828620] usb usb3: Manufacturer: Linux 4.19.75-v7l+ dwc_otg_hcd
[0.828644] usb usb3: SerialNumber: fe980000.usb
[0.830051] usbcore: registered new interface driver uas
[0.830182] usbcore: registered new interface driver usb-storage
[0.836488] usbcore: registered new interface driver usbhid
[0.836511] usbhid: USB HID core driver
[0.971598] usb 1-1: new high-speed USB device number 2 using xhci_hcd
[1.154217] usb 1-1: New USB device found, idVendor=2109, idProduct=3431, bcdDevice= 4.20
[1.154254] usb 1-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=0, Product=1, SerialNumber=0
[1.154281] usb 1-1: Product: USB2.0 Hub
[1.301989] usb 2-1: new SuperSpeed Gen 1 USB device number 2 using xhci_hcd
[1.332965] usb 2-1: New USB device found, idVendor=174c, idProduct=55aa, bcdDevice= 1.00
[1.332999] usb 2-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=2, Product=3, SerialNumber=1
[1.333026] usb 2-1: Product: ASM105x
[1.333048] usb 2-1: Manufacturer: ASMT
[1.333071] usb 2-1: SerialNumber: 123456789B79F
This is the dmesg log showing the hardware detection as hardware is activated on the Pi. If your log is really long you can generate fresh entries by just unplugging a device and plugging it back in and running the command again. Here we can clearly see that the ASM105x is what our StarTech adapter is being detected as.
Now we can go back to our first lsusb command and we want the 8 characters from the ID field that comes right after the Device:
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 174c:55aa ASMedia Technology Inc. Name: ASM1051E SATA 6Gb/s bridge
Our adapter’s ID is: 174c:55aa
Applying Quirks
To apply the quirks to our USB adapter we are going to edit /boot/cmdline.txt. Type:
sudo nano /boot/cmdline.txt
We are going to add the following entry into the very front of cmdline.txt:
usb-storage.quirks=XXXX:XXXX:u
In place of the X’s above you will put in your adapter’s ID that we got before. With the example commands I gave above mine would look like this: usb-storage.quirks=174c:55aa:u. After this my cmdline.txt looks like this (everything should be one continuous line, no line breaks!):
Now reboot the Pi. If the Pi fails to boot you can plug the SD card into the computer and go to /boot/cmdline.txt and undo the change we did so you can boot back in with your SD card.
Verifying Quirks
Once you have rebooted after changing cmdline.txt we can verify the quirks have been applied by doing another dmesg | grep usb command:
sudo dmesg | grep usb
[1.332924] usb 2-1: New USB device found, idVendor=174c, idProduct=55aa, bcdDevice= 1.00
[1.332957] usb 2-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=2, Product=3, SerialNumber=1
[1.332983] usb 2-1: Product: ASM105x
[1.333006] usb 2-1: Manufacturer: ASMT
[1.333028] usb 2-1: SerialNumber: 123456789B79F
[1.335967] usb 2-1: UAS is blacklisted for this device, using usb-storage instead
[1.336071] usb 2-1: UAS is blacklisted for this device, using usb-storage instead
[1.336103] usb-storage 2-1:1.0: USB Mass Storage device detected
[1.336479] usb-storage 2-1:1.0: Quirks match for vid 174c pid 55aa: c00000
[1.336611] scsi host0: usb-storage 2-1:1.0
This time we can see in dmesg that UAS was blacklisted for the device and it has loaded with the usb-storage driver instead. This driver tends to be more compatible with the “problematic adapters” but the performance is usually significantly lower. It’s definitely worth a try though as some adapters do better with the quirks performance-wise. The only way to know for sure is to run a benchmark (see “Verify Drive Performance” section).
If you want to see which Pi storage performs the fastest and get an idea of what kind of drives to look for check out my 2022 Raspberry Pi Storage Benchmarks
Sorry to post this here, wasn’t sure how to properly report it.
In the pibenchmarks site, the link for Gigabyte 2.5″ SSD goes to a 403 Forbidden page.
Steps to reproduce: search “gigabyte ssd” (no quotes), click the “Gigabyte 2.5″ SSD” next to Brand
My guess is the inches symbol is not being properly translated or something.
Thanks!
Thanks for reporting this! I do see it as well on everything with an ” in it. It ended up being something really dumb (a security script blocking anything with a ~ in it, which I used for the replacement character for “). It should be fixed now!
scollar
3 years ago
Inatek enclosure won’t boot USB 3, boots USB 2 fine on manjaro OS’s however works fine Raspberry Pi OS and Ubuntu distributions, Does anyone have any ideas on this?
That’s some good testing you did to narrow things down. If only one OS won’t boot (Manjaro) then it’s not your Pi’s firmware or your adapter.
In the past what I’ve seen this be is actually the firmware files included with the Manjaro base OS (this would be start.elf, start4.elf, all of the *.elf and *.dat files on the /boot partition) are too old. It could also be the kernel itself is too old which is a bit trickier to deal with.
In the past I used to copy the *.elf and *.dat files from an up to date Raspberry Pi OS installation and update them myself on the old image (this was Ubuntu 18.04 at the time, before it was officially supported, it used to have this exact same issue). I did that in this project here. You would not need to do everything in here as this actually *does* replace the kernel and I don’t think you’ll need to do that most likely (but it’s possible).
It won’t be easy (unless you just copy the .elf, .dat files and it works) but I believe your options will be to wait for an update/fix or attempt to do something like this. You aren’t the only one that has encounted this problem. Here’s another instance of it here.
That person did say that copying just the *.elf and *.dat files from a working boot partition (like Pi OS / Ubuntu) over to Manjaro got it going for what it’s worth (don’t copy the kernel.img files or other stuff on the boot volume, it needs to be more targeted than that, it should only be the *.elf and *.dat files)!
If you’re an *advanced* user you could definitely figure out how to do this and more using the link I posted to my GitHub that did it for Ubuntu 18.04 before it was officially supported and go all the way to rebuilding the kernel yourself if you have to. I really don’t think that will be necessary in this case though as I was able to find people saying that simply copying newer *.elf and *.dat files to the Manjaro “boot” volume indeed was the solution from just a little more than a year ago here (June 2020).
I would try copying the *.elf and *.dat files from a booting OS like Raspberry Pi OS/Ubuntu first and see if that gets it. If not you may need to wait for a fix or let the Manjaro team know this needs a firmware update/fix inside their distributed image!
Jeff
3 years ago
I was trying to get this going with 2 3.5″ Ironwolf 4tb drives, using the Sabrent HB-UMP3 plus Startech SATA Data&Power Combo (USB312SAT3CB), but unfortunately it doesn’t seem like there is enough power to run these HDs from the Sabrent. If I put them into their own enclosure, they spin up but just connected via the Startech cables I get nothing. It’s a shame – these are nice drives that I otherwise don’t have a good purpose for! 🙁
I know you didn’t say you had the “Pro” version but the 6TB Pro version is the next step above the 4TB version you have so it should be close (within ~1-2W maximum). I can definitely see why you’re having trouble. These power requirements are *insane*. The *idle* for the 6TB version (the smallest offered in Pro) is 7.5W with an average usage of 8.1W. That is literally the highest I’ve ever seen of any drive. It’s also far more power than the entire Pi itself uses just in idle mode (the Pi 4 idles at 2.85W as a comparison).
How about if you plug in the StarTech to a computer’s USB 3.1/3.2 port (the higher the better since higher versions tend to be able to negotiate more power, may be limited by your adapter’s version as well but you probably have at least the 3.1 version). Will it spin up then? Theoretically it should. If it does then you just need a “bigger” powered USB hub to use them. They definitely seem to have very high power requirements though!
I think it will need a very beefy powered USB hub but try using a computer (which are usually configured to provide more power) as I’m guessing plugged into something like a full blown PC with a large PSU it will probably fire up and show as a drive within Windows / OS X / Linux.
If this is the case then you have confirmed you simply need a more powerful powered USB hub (or at least a lot more powerful than usual, but there are models out there that could power several of these drives that come with larger power bricks/supplies).
Compatibility may vary with the Pi but you can usually find someone in the reviews mentioning if it works with the Pi. Most hubs can work (including with USB booting) if you unplug the powered USB hub’s USB connection to the Pi (leaving the hub itself powered) while you are connecting the Pi’s power cable and then immediately plugging back in the hub’s USB cable to the Pi before the boot sequence has a chance to start.
It’s going to boil down to your preferences on how many of these drives you want to attempt to power and the cost/space tradeoff for the hub itself. Definitely let us know how it turns out / what you find!
Morgon
3 years ago
Got another one for the naughty list. Couldn’t directly confirm with with lsusb (system is on Alpine linux (HomeAssistant OS)), but hdparm results were lackluster enough to make it obvious.
Thanks for that, I actually recognize that one too from AliExpress as the one that was being sold as the “fake” StarTech (I think it’s still on there too) and it’s absolutely identical to that cable.
I’ve added it to the list, thanks again!
Bin
3 years ago
Hey James,
thank you so much for this tutorial! I bought a Conceptronic ABBY01B USB 3.0 to SATA adapter.
and can sadly report that this also does not play well with the RPI4. Unable to boot. It also uses that damned JMS567 Controller, that seems to never work right.
Other than that, I just found your website and I really enjoy the content! Very helpful, thank you so much!
Ahhh, JMS567, I recognize that controller! I have an option for you that can potentially get it working in combination with enabling quirks mode (see quirks section of the article) by updating the firmware. Check out this article here.
This is definitely worth a try. Try using the same ODROID firmware as the JMS578 (sometimes they identify as 567 but are really 578) as people stated this did work for them here. I haven’t tested this yet so 567 isn’t specifically mentioned in the article but if it does work like the people in that forum post stated I will add it into the other article’s list there if you’re able to confirm!
Definitely let us know what you find if you give the firmware update + quirks mode a try!
Hamim Ruwayfi
3 years ago
Hello,
I’ve Pi 4 8GB with a decent quality recommended 5V 3.0A power supply. Booting from a 32GB microSD and using an ADATA UV128 32GB USB 3 Flash Drive (Pen Drive) as my storage. Gbit ethernet is plugged and the rest of 3 USBs are unoccupied and I’m using the Pi headless over VNC.
I have an Adata XPG SX6000 Pro 256GB NVMe M.2. So a couple of weeks ago I ordered a UGREEN (model: CM238, P/N: 60354) NVMe M.2 USB-C enclosure. Upon receiving the product yesterday I plugged it into my Pi’s USB 3.0 port. At first, the file manager wasn’t detecting it but the light was turned on the enclosure. After googling, I found reinstalling Raspbian freshly would detect my drive. So I did and Pi indeed detected my NVMe. But I couldn’t read nor write and the low voltage warning was constantly showing.
I looked for a solution everywhere, even did USB quirks, adding USB power option in the kernel, formating NVMe in the different file systems (NTFS,exFAT, ext4). Nothing quite seems to work. Every time I plug it in, the lights on my enclosure blink constantly, but Pi can’t detect it but when rarely detects it, pi gives a low voltage warning!
As you said, for the USB enclosure for NVMe, you recommend using a 3.5A adapter. Now, I just ordered this yesterday,
CHOETECH Q5001 5A Fast Charger, 22.5W (4.5V/5A, 5V/4.5A) USB A Quick Charger Power Adapter, It’s an adapter for mobile but a decent quality that can provide up to 4.5A at 5V. Will this work? Well, theoretically it should, but if It doesn’t, I’ll let you know. I’ll then probably have to use a Powered USB hub.
That definitely does sound like power/voltage. I do know one trick that has helped drives right on the edge have enough power. If you set over_voltage=6 in your /boot/config.txt file it sometimes will allow enough extra voltage to pass through the Pi to power the drive!
Another thing to keep in mind is if anything else is plugged into the USB ports it will reduce the chances of having enough power to boot for each device plugged in. A keyboard, mouse, or any other peripheral will draw from your total power limit for USB devices. If possible unplugging everything will give a little extra juice!
The power adapter looks totally fine. I’ve plugged in similar power adapters! The UGREEN enclosure isn’t as big of a power hog as some of the other NVMe enclosures so it may be possible to do this.
There is a total USB current limit to be aware of here. I’ve seen some of the extremely power hungry drive/enclosure combos pull more than the maximum allowed USB power limit allows and in those cases they did have to get a powered USB hub. I think yours has a decent chance of working (I’m glad you got the UGREEN one instead of the ASUS RGB one or one of the really power hungry ones or I would say there’s no chance) as long as there isn’t much else plugged into the Pi.
Everything looks good with your plan to me. It’s just going to depend on whether the total current draw exceeds the power limit specifications that I linked to above in which case the hub may be necessary. Definitely let us all know what you find!
Mark Redgwell
3 years ago
Hello James
I’m not sure if this device has been reported by anyone in the comments yet. I went back as far as 5 months ago and then gave up!!
I use a 8GB Pi 4 in a DeskPi case. The case has built-in 2.5 and m.2 adapters, much like the Argon case. It boots fine with a 2.5 HHD, but it won’t work with a Kingston A400 SSD.
Using your guide I was able to determine the adapter is ASMedia Technology Inc. ASM1153 SATA 3Gb/s bridge. Do you know anything about this adaptor?
I also found this announcement from the DeskPi team that looked promising. They said these fixes enable UASP/Trim support which with that enabled + quirks should get you booting!
I think if you are able to do these firmware updates (I think you might need a special tool, that is unfortunate if that is the case) it may work in quirks mode (see the quirks mode section). That may be worth a try as is but I suspect the only chance of it working is with the update + quirks mode together. The last person ended up going with the Argon One case because it supports UASP/Trim but it looks like it’s possible to update the firmware on the board. Definitely let us know what you decide to do / how it turns out!
Actually, I took the SSD which was working fine in a Ugreen adapter case and placed it in the DeskPi and it worked great! I thought I had already tried the SSD with the new board but I hadn’t. I thought I should make sure before I contacted the folks at DeskPi. I’m glad I did. Thanks for the suggestions. I found this guide and the comments quite informative
Sorry to post this here, wasn’t sure how to properly report it.
In the pibenchmarks site, the link for Gigabyte 2.5″ SSD goes to a 403 Forbidden page.
Steps to reproduce: search “gigabyte ssd” (no quotes), click the “Gigabyte 2.5″ SSD” next to Brand
My guess is the inches symbol is not being properly translated or something.
Thanks!
Hey Gonzo,
Thanks for reporting this! I do see it as well on everything with an ” in it. It ended up being something really dumb (a security script blocking anything with a ~ in it, which I used for the replacement character for “). It should be fixed now!
Inatek enclosure won’t boot USB 3, boots USB 2 fine on manjaro OS’s however works fine Raspberry Pi OS and Ubuntu distributions, Does anyone have any ideas on this?
Hey scollar,
That’s some good testing you did to narrow things down. If only one OS won’t boot (Manjaro) then it’s not your Pi’s firmware or your adapter.
In the past what I’ve seen this be is actually the firmware files included with the Manjaro base OS (this would be start.elf, start4.elf, all of the *.elf and *.dat files on the /boot partition) are too old. It could also be the kernel itself is too old which is a bit trickier to deal with.
In the past I used to copy the *.elf and *.dat files from an up to date Raspberry Pi OS installation and update them myself on the old image (this was Ubuntu 18.04 at the time, before it was officially supported, it used to have this exact same issue). I did that in this project here. You would not need to do everything in here as this actually *does* replace the kernel and I don’t think you’ll need to do that most likely (but it’s possible).
It won’t be easy (unless you just copy the .elf, .dat files and it works) but I believe your options will be to wait for an update/fix or attempt to do something like this. You aren’t the only one that has encounted this problem. Here’s another instance of it here.
That person did say that copying just the *.elf and *.dat files from a working boot partition (like Pi OS / Ubuntu) over to Manjaro got it going for what it’s worth (don’t copy the kernel.img files or other stuff on the boot volume, it needs to be more targeted than that, it should only be the *.elf and *.dat files)!
If you’re an *advanced* user you could definitely figure out how to do this and more using the link I posted to my GitHub that did it for Ubuntu 18.04 before it was officially supported and go all the way to rebuilding the kernel yourself if you have to. I really don’t think that will be necessary in this case though as I was able to find people saying that simply copying newer *.elf and *.dat files to the Manjaro “boot” volume indeed was the solution from just a little more than a year ago here (June 2020).
I would try copying the *.elf and *.dat files from a booting OS like Raspberry Pi OS/Ubuntu first and see if that gets it. If not you may need to wait for a fix or let the Manjaro team know this needs a firmware update/fix inside their distributed image!
I was trying to get this going with 2 3.5″ Ironwolf 4tb drives, using the Sabrent HB-UMP3 plus Startech SATA Data&Power Combo (USB312SAT3CB), but unfortunately it doesn’t seem like there is enough power to run these HDs from the Sabrent. If I put them into their own enclosure, they spin up but just connected via the Startech cables I get nothing. It’s a shame – these are nice drives that I otherwise don’t have a good purpose for! 🙁
Hey Jeff,
I pulled up a spec sheet for the IronWolf Pro here.
I know you didn’t say you had the “Pro” version but the 6TB Pro version is the next step above the 4TB version you have so it should be close (within ~1-2W maximum). I can definitely see why you’re having trouble. These power requirements are *insane*. The *idle* for the 6TB version (the smallest offered in Pro) is 7.5W with an average usage of 8.1W. That is literally the highest I’ve ever seen of any drive. It’s also far more power than the entire Pi itself uses just in idle mode (the Pi 4 idles at 2.85W as a comparison).
How about if you plug in the StarTech to a computer’s USB 3.1/3.2 port (the higher the better since higher versions tend to be able to negotiate more power, may be limited by your adapter’s version as well but you probably have at least the 3.1 version). Will it spin up then? Theoretically it should. If it does then you just need a “bigger” powered USB hub to use them. They definitely seem to have very high power requirements though!
I think it will need a very beefy powered USB hub but try using a computer (which are usually configured to provide more power) as I’m guessing plugged into something like a full blown PC with a large PSU it will probably fire up and show as a drive within Windows / OS X / Linux.
If this is the case then you have confirmed you simply need a more powerful powered USB hub (or at least a lot more powerful than usual, but there are models out there that could power several of these drives that come with larger power bricks/supplies).
Compatibility may vary with the Pi but you can usually find someone in the reviews mentioning if it works with the Pi. Most hubs can work (including with USB booting) if you unplug the powered USB hub’s USB connection to the Pi (leaving the hub itself powered) while you are connecting the Pi’s power cable and then immediately plugging back in the hub’s USB cable to the Pi before the boot sequence has a chance to start.
It’s going to boil down to your preferences on how many of these drives you want to attempt to power and the cost/space tradeoff for the hub itself. Definitely let us know how it turns out / what you find!
Got another one for the naughty list. Couldn’t directly confirm with with lsusb (system is on Alpine linux (HomeAssistant OS)), but hdparm results were lackluster enough to make it obvious.
CableCreation USB 3.0 to SATA Adapter, SATA to USB 3.0 Cable, Compatible 2.5″ SATA III HDD Hard Disk Driver, 0.5FT, Black
Hey Morgon,
Thanks for that, I actually recognize that one too from AliExpress as the one that was being sold as the “fake” StarTech (I think it’s still on there too) and it’s absolutely identical to that cable.
I’ve added it to the list, thanks again!
Hey James,
thank you so much for this tutorial! I bought a Conceptronic ABBY01B USB 3.0 to SATA adapter.
and can sadly report that this also does not play well with the RPI4. Unable to boot. It also uses that damned JMS567 Controller, that seems to never work right.
Other than that, I just found your website and I really enjoy the content! Very helpful, thank you so much!
Best,
Bin
Hey Bin,
Ahhh, JMS567, I recognize that controller! I have an option for you that can potentially get it working in combination with enabling quirks mode (see quirks section of the article) by updating the firmware. Check out this article here.
This is definitely worth a try. Try using the same ODROID firmware as the JMS578 (sometimes they identify as 567 but are really 578) as people stated this did work for them here. I haven’t tested this yet so 567 isn’t specifically mentioned in the article but if it does work like the people in that forum post stated I will add it into the other article’s list there if you’re able to confirm!
Definitely let us know what you find if you give the firmware update + quirks mode a try!
Hello,
I’ve Pi 4 8GB with a decent quality recommended 5V 3.0A power supply. Booting from a 32GB microSD and using an ADATA UV128 32GB USB 3 Flash Drive (Pen Drive) as my storage. Gbit ethernet is plugged and the rest of 3 USBs are unoccupied and I’m using the Pi headless over VNC.
I have an Adata XPG SX6000 Pro 256GB NVMe M.2. So a couple of weeks ago I ordered a UGREEN (model: CM238, P/N: 60354) NVMe M.2 USB-C enclosure. Upon receiving the product yesterday I plugged it into my Pi’s USB 3.0 port. At first, the file manager wasn’t detecting it but the light was turned on the enclosure. After googling, I found reinstalling Raspbian freshly would detect my drive. So I did and Pi indeed detected my NVMe. But I couldn’t read nor write and the low voltage warning was constantly showing.
I looked for a solution everywhere, even did USB quirks, adding USB power option in the kernel, formating NVMe in the different file systems (NTFS,exFAT, ext4). Nothing quite seems to work. Every time I plug it in, the lights on my enclosure blink constantly, but Pi can’t detect it but when rarely detects it, pi gives a low voltage warning!
As you said, for the USB enclosure for NVMe, you recommend using a 3.5A adapter. Now, I just ordered this yesterday,
CHOETECH Q5001 5A Fast Charger, 22.5W (4.5V/5A, 5V/4.5A) USB A Quick Charger Power Adapter, It’s an adapter for mobile but a decent quality that can provide up to 4.5A at 5V. Will this work? Well, theoretically it should, but if It doesn’t, I’ll let you know. I’ll then probably have to use a Powered USB hub.
Hey Hamim,
That definitely does sound like power/voltage. I do know one trick that has helped drives right on the edge have enough power. If you set over_voltage=6 in your /boot/config.txt file it sometimes will allow enough extra voltage to pass through the Pi to power the drive!
Another thing to keep in mind is if anything else is plugged into the USB ports it will reduce the chances of having enough power to boot for each device plugged in. A keyboard, mouse, or any other peripheral will draw from your total power limit for USB devices. If possible unplugging everything will give a little extra juice!
The power adapter looks totally fine. I’ve plugged in similar power adapters! The UGREEN enclosure isn’t as big of a power hog as some of the other NVMe enclosures so it may be possible to do this.
There is a total USB current limit to be aware of here. I’ve seen some of the extremely power hungry drive/enclosure combos pull more than the maximum allowed USB power limit allows and in those cases they did have to get a powered USB hub. I think yours has a decent chance of working (I’m glad you got the UGREEN one instead of the ASUS RGB one or one of the really power hungry ones or I would say there’s no chance) as long as there isn’t much else plugged into the Pi.
Everything looks good with your plan to me. It’s just going to depend on whether the total current draw exceeds the power limit specifications that I linked to above in which case the hub may be necessary. Definitely let us all know what you find!
Hello James
I’m not sure if this device has been reported by anyone in the comments yet. I went back as far as 5 months ago and then gave up!!
I use a 8GB Pi 4 in a DeskPi case. The case has built-in 2.5 and m.2 adapters, much like the Argon case. It boots fine with a 2.5 HHD, but it won’t work with a Kingston A400 SSD.
Using your guide I was able to determine the adapter is ASMedia Technology Inc. ASM1153 SATA 3Gb/s bridge. Do you know anything about this adaptor?
Hey Mark,
That is an interesting one! It has come up one time before here.
Now at the time I didn’t see any way to update the firmware. Now it looks like maybe there is a way to update it but it looks like it might not be easy. According to this article the stock firmware lacks TRIM support. I do recognize the ASMedia controller. I was able to find your exact issue with your exact drive here from May.
I also found this announcement from the DeskPi team that looked promising. They said these fixes enable UASP/Trim support which with that enabled + quirks should get you booting!
I think if you are able to do these firmware updates (I think you might need a special tool, that is unfortunate if that is the case) it may work in quirks mode (see the quirks mode section). That may be worth a try as is but I suspect the only chance of it working is with the update + quirks mode together. The last person ended up going with the Argon One case because it supports UASP/Trim but it looks like it’s possible to update the firmware on the board. Definitely let us know what you decide to do / how it turns out!
Actually, I took the SSD which was working fine in a Ugreen adapter case and placed it in the DeskPi and it worked great! I thought I had already tried the SSD with the new board but I hadn’t. I thought I should make sure before I contacted the folks at DeskPi. I’m glad I did. Thanks for the suggestions. I found this guide and the comments quite informative
Hey Mark,
Very glad to hear you got it going and thanks for the kind words, take care!