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
I bought the “Extremely cheap adapter from AliExpress” and i think it’s unreliable for whatever reason it´is slow for booting. I just have one unit so maybe mine its faulty
It could be power related as well. Do you have a powered USB hub by chance? Is it slower to boot sometimes than others? Usually with slow boots/sometimes won’t even boot it has been power related. Just something to test if you can!
Upon removing the SD card the drive sometimes boots, sometimes not. It runs very very hot. When it does boot it is so slow that its to usable. For example it takes about 30 min to create an account in homes assistant.
My goal would be to run home assistant, phoscon and Pi-hole. I suppose the best route would be docker?
Should I be using a 32 bit pi image or a 64 bit?
Please can you advise where I may be going wrong as your guide seemed so clear. thanks
Great questions! That’s a very high quality NVMe drive you have in there too with it!
What does your power setup look like? Are you using a stock 3.0A USB-C power adapter? The issue we’ve been seeing with NVMe enclosures in particular is power issues.
People have been taking two different approaches. Some have been getting a powered USB hub like this Sabrent one or to use a higher output power adapter like the CanaKit 3.5A power adapter which gives the Pi an extra 500 mA of power to pass along to the drive.
I’m not sure if the heat is too unusual yet. Some of the higher performance NVMe drives run very hot these days. The reason I believe it’s power is the very low performance and sometimes being able to boot and sometimes not. That definitely points toward power which fluctuates constantly depending on what the Pi is doing and even external/environmental factors!
Many drive enclosures like the ICY BOX are coming up with different ways to deal with the heat. In this case, the ICY BOX is literally a giant heatsink. There is a thermal pad that makes contact with your drive and the heat is dissipated through the enclosure’s heatsink-inspired design.
The Samsung 970 EVO Plus is one of the fastest drives there is. I am using a 970 EVO 1TB (not the Plus unfortunately) as my “gaming” drive in my main rig even! It’s going to be crazy fast setup.
Fixing the power will fix the performance/unreliable boot issues but you may still have heat to deal with with such a class of drive! I just wanted to throw a couple options out there that commenters have personally vouched for as working.
Winston
3 years ago
Thank you for the guide – I was able to get my RPi 4 to boot and work, however, I run into a problem with the file system dropping out after some time. I’ve also experienced an ext4 error inode … I’m not new to the Pi, but I’m not a programmer – I’ve been digging for a while and sill haven’t found an answer to what the issue is.
I can definitely tell you what that is, it is power! Depending on the activity of the CPU and other Pi onboard peripherals it probably usually has enough.
What is happening though is there will be a big spike or a “perfect storm” of everything needing power at the same time and the drive will not get enough power to continue operating. If it is in the middle of a write when this happens that is when you will see problems. The UGREEN and other NVMe enclosures have come up here a bunch of times in the comments from my other USB booting guides so you’re in good company!
Do you have a powered USB hub available you could test with? How about any USB-C power adapters that carry more capacity? So far the solutions have been a powered USB hub like this Sabrent one or to use a higher output power adapter like the CanaKit 3.5A power adapter (normal Pi ones are only rated for 3.0, so gives another 500mA of headroom for the drive).
The NVMe ones have proven to be particularly power hungry as well. Make sure you check out my full list of adapters at New Raspberry Pi 4 Bootloader USB / Network Boot Guide where I go really into depth on these and share a lot of what we’ve learned that isn’t in this article!
My PI 4 4Gb eeprom is up-to-date : eeprom version 2021-01-14 (stable) (from labists)
It take’s many many times to boot (about 2 or 3 minutes). Just a simple ssh can take more than one minute (with the enclosure’s ligth flashing).
Globally, all comands take long time to execute.
I don’t know what can I do to have better performance…
Aurora
3 years ago
Anyone have any info on if Sabrent m.2 ssd to usb 3.0 (ec-m2cu) or ec-m2sa is working with the pi?
Jeff
3 years ago
I just bought and received my new RaspPi4 this week as well as the parts you recommended in this guide. It’s still pretty fresh, but everything seems to be working without any issue. I ejected the SD card and it appears to be working perfectly. Thanks for doing this!
I bought the “Extremely cheap adapter from AliExpress” and i think it’s unreliable for whatever reason it´is slow for booting. I just have one unit so maybe mine its faulty
Hey misco,
It could be power related as well. Do you have a powered USB hub by chance? Is it slower to boot sometimes than others? Usually with slow boots/sometimes won’t even boot it has been power related. Just something to test if you can!
DONT BUY MORE.
I had 5 of them, all failed miserably. I also dont think its power related because once I switched to startech everything booted quickly and normally.
Hello,
I have followed your guide with the following hardware:
raspberry PI 4 8BG
Raspbee II
M.2 NVMe SSD Enclosure, Aluminum USB C 3.1 Gen 2 to M-Key M&B-Key NVMe PCIe 10Gbps External
Samsung 970 EVO Plus 1 TB PCIe NVMe M.2 (2280) Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) (MZ-V7S1T0)
Upon removing the SD card the drive sometimes boots, sometimes not. It runs very very hot. When it does boot it is so slow that its to usable. For example it takes about 30 min to create an account in homes assistant.
My goal would be to run home assistant, phoscon and Pi-hole. I suppose the best route would be docker?
Should I be using a 32 bit pi image or a 64 bit?
Please can you advise where I may be going wrong as your guide seemed so clear. thanks
Hey Jonathan,
Great questions! That’s a very high quality NVMe drive you have in there too with it!
What does your power setup look like? Are you using a stock 3.0A USB-C power adapter? The issue we’ve been seeing with NVMe enclosures in particular is power issues.
People have been taking two different approaches. Some have been getting a powered USB hub like this Sabrent one or to use a higher output power adapter like the CanaKit 3.5A power adapter which gives the Pi an extra 500 mA of power to pass along to the drive.
I’m not sure if the heat is too unusual yet. Some of the higher performance NVMe drives run very hot these days. The reason I believe it’s power is the very low performance and sometimes being able to boot and sometimes not. That definitely points toward power which fluctuates constantly depending on what the Pi is doing and even external/environmental factors!
Many drive enclosures like the ICY BOX are coming up with different ways to deal with the heat. In this case, the ICY BOX is literally a giant heatsink. There is a thermal pad that makes contact with your drive and the heat is dissipated through the enclosure’s heatsink-inspired design.
The Samsung 970 EVO Plus is one of the fastest drives there is. I am using a 970 EVO 1TB (not the Plus unfortunately) as my “gaming” drive in my main rig even! It’s going to be crazy fast setup.
Fixing the power will fix the performance/unreliable boot issues but you may still have heat to deal with with such a class of drive! I just wanted to throw a couple options out there that commenters have personally vouched for as working.
Thank you for the guide – I was able to get my RPi 4 to boot and work, however, I run into a problem with the file system dropping out after some time. I’ve also experienced an ext4 error inode … I’m not new to the Pi, but I’m not a programmer – I’ve been digging for a while and sill haven’t found an answer to what the issue is.
I’m using the UGreen NVMe M.2 USB-C enclosure and crucial P1 1TB.
The speed test is 300mb/s rw, and I can boot from the SSD.
Perhaps part of the issue is Ubuntu Server 20.04?
Thoughts?
Hey Winston,
I can definitely tell you what that is, it is power! Depending on the activity of the CPU and other Pi onboard peripherals it probably usually has enough.
What is happening though is there will be a big spike or a “perfect storm” of everything needing power at the same time and the drive will not get enough power to continue operating. If it is in the middle of a write when this happens that is when you will see problems. The UGREEN and other NVMe enclosures have come up here a bunch of times in the comments from my other USB booting guides so you’re in good company!
Do you have a powered USB hub available you could test with? How about any USB-C power adapters that carry more capacity? So far the solutions have been a powered USB hub like this Sabrent one or to use a higher output power adapter like the CanaKit 3.5A power adapter (normal Pi ones are only rated for 3.0, so gives another 500mA of headroom for the drive).
The NVMe ones have proven to be particularly power hungry as well. Make sure you check out my full list of adapters at New Raspberry Pi 4 Bootloader USB / Network Boot Guide where I go really into depth on these and share a lot of what we’ve learned that isn’t in this article!
Thanks James. I ordered a powered hub earlier, should be here next week. Other than the drive, I have a USB Ethernet and a basic keyboard plugged.
Awesome Winston, let us know how it turns out! I think you’ll be good to go!
Hey there,
I bought
UGREEN M.2 NVMe SSD Enclosure
And Samsung SSD Internal 970 EVO NVMe M.2 (500 Go).
My PI 4 4Gb eeprom is up-to-date : eeprom version 2021-01-14 (stable) (from labists)
It take’s many many times to boot (about 2 or 3 minutes). Just a simple ssh can take more than one minute (with the enclosure’s ligth flashing).
Globally, all comands take long time to execute.
I don’t know what can I do to have better performance…
Anyone have any info on if Sabrent m.2 ssd to usb 3.0 (ec-m2cu) or ec-m2sa is working with the pi?
I just bought and received my new RaspPi4 this week as well as the parts you recommended in this guide. It’s still pretty fresh, but everything seems to be working without any issue. I ejected the SD card and it appears to be working perfectly. Thanks for doing this!
Excellent, thanks for sharing your success Jeff, have fun and enjoy!
In your chart above, I think you have the wrong USB (3.0 vs 3.1) listed for the StarTech adapters in the second column. Thanks!