[kwlug-disc] Booting the Raspberry Pi from a hard disk

[Raymond Chen]

That happened to my SD card a lot when my Pi served WordPress.
Does your hard drive have to connect to the PI directly? If your router
supports network storage, connecting your hard drive to it and mount it
through SMB is another option.


On Mon, Feb 11, 2019 at 5:57 AM Charles M <chaslinux at gmail.com> wrote:

> What if you connect the HD ro a powered USB hub and then connect the hub
> to the Pi? Yes it adds more wires, but should solve the voltage issues.
>
> Otherwise saw those cheap Kingston 120GB SSDs for a crazy $27.99 at CC
> with lots in stock.
>
> On Sun, Feb 10, 2019 at 6:42 PM Khalid Baheyeldin <kb at 2bits.com> wrote:
>
>> I am looking to replace the SD card in the Pi with an external USB hard
>> drive, because
>> of how using the SD card as the regular filesystem, kills it quick if the
>> Raspberry Pi is busy.
>>
>> The disk in question is a 2.5" HDD in an unpowered SATA to USB enclosure.
>>
>> What is on the web is that the Raspberry Pi does not provide enough
>> current to power on
>> regular hard drives. One overcomes this by having the following line in
>> /boot/config.txt:
>>
>> max_usb_current=1
>>
>> And now the Pi will provide enough current for some disks to work.
>>
>> I plugged in the 2.5" USB disk into an old Pi 2, and I got this:
>>
>> [1915663.656110] *Under-voltage detected!* (0x00050005)
>> [1915665.896054] usb 1-1.2: new high-speed USB device number 6 using
>> dwc_otg
>> [1915666.027408] usb 1-1.2: New USB device found, idVendor=152d,
>> idProduct=0539
>> [1915666.027426] usb 1-1.2: New USB device strings: Mfr=10, Product=11,
>> SerialNumber=3
>> [1915666.027437] usb 1-1.2: Product: USB to ATA/ATAPI Bridge
>> [1915666.027448] usb 1-1.2: Manufacturer: JMicron
>> [1915666.027458] usb 1-1.2: SerialNumber: 00A1234568BF
>> [1915666.028810] usb-storage 1-1.2:1.0: USB Mass Storage device detected
>> [1915666.034242] scsi host0: usb-storage 1-1.2:1.0
>> [1915667.097004] scsi 0:0:0:0: Direct-Access     FUJITSU  zzzzz
>> 0100 PQ: 0 ANSI: 6
>> [1915667.098779] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] 488397168 512-byte logical blocks:
>> (250 GB/233 GiB)
>> [1915667.099523] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off
>> [1915667.099542] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Mode Sense: 67 00 10 08
>> [1915667.100531] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write cache: enabled, read cache:
>> enabled, supports DPO and FUA
>> [1915667.126638] sd 0:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg0 type 0
>> [1915667.167254]  sda: sda1 sda2 < sda5 >
>> [1915667.171010] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Attached SCSI disk
>> [1915669.896159] *Voltage normalised* (0x00000000)
>> [1915765.621420]  sda: sda1 sda2 < sda5 >
>> [1915802.971527] EXT4-fs (sda1): mounted filesystem with ordered data
>> mode. Opts: (null)
>>
>> I was able to mount filesystems from the hard disk, even without the
>> above max current parameter.
>> So, it seems that this step is not necessary anymore.
>>
>> But then I saw these in dmesg:
>>
>> [1919494.831934] usb 1-1.2: reset high-speed USB device number 72 using
>> dwc_otg
>> [1919499.991904] usb 1-1.2: device descriptor read/64, error -110
>> [1919515.351869] usb 1-1.2: device descriptor read/64, error -110
>> [1919515.571861] usb 1-1.2: reset high-speed USB device number 72 using
>> dwc_otg
>> [1919520.711888] usb 1-1.2: device descriptor read/64, error -110
>> [1919536.071810] usb 1-1.2: device descriptor read/64, error -110
>> [1919536.291810] usb 1-1.2: reset high-speed USB device number 72 using
>> dwc_otg
>> [1919546.831810] usb 1-1.2: device not accepting address 72, error -110
>> [1919546.931778] usb 1-1.2: reset high-speed USB device number 72 using
>> dwc_otg
>> [1919557.471762] usb 1-1.2: device not accepting address 72, error -110
>> [1919557.472224] usb 1-1.2: USB disconnect, device number 72
>> [1919557.490276] sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] Synchronizing SCSI cache
>> [1919557.492644] sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] tag#0 UNKNOWN(0x2003) Result:
>> hostbyte=0x01 driverbyte=0x00
>> [1919557.492687] sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] tag#0 CDB: opcode=0x28 28 00 1c 9c b8
>> 00 00 00 08 00
>> [1919557.492703] print_req_error: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 480032768
>> [1919557.492841] sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] tag#0 UNKNOWN(0x2003) Result:
>> hostbyte=0x01 driverbyte=0x00
>> [1919557.492863] sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] tag#0 CDB: opcode=0x28 28 00 00 00 08
>> 18 00 00 08 00
>> [1919557.492874] print_req_error: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 2072
>> [1919557.492916] blk_partition_remap: fail for partition 5
>> [1919557.492936] Buffer I/O error on dev sdb5, logical block 256, async
>> page read
>> [1919557.493019] blk_partition_remap: fail for partition 1
>> [1919557.493032] Buffer I/O error on dev sdb1, logical block 3, async
>> page read
>> [1919557.495651] sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] Synchronize Cache(10) failed: Result:
>> hostbyte=0x01 driverbyte=0x00
>> [1919557.741765] usb 1-1.2: new high-speed USB device number 73 using
>> dwc_otg
>> [1919562.871741] usb 1-1.2: device descriptor read/64, error -110
>> [1919578.231704] usb 1-1.2: device descriptor read/64, error -110
>> [1919578.451696] usb 1-1.2: new high-speed USB device number 74 using
>> dwc_otg
>> [1919583.591696] usb 1-1.2: device descriptor read/64, error -110
>>
>> Perhaps power saving on the USB ports or by the enclosure's electronics?
>>
>> The other thing is telling the Pi to boot from that USB disk. This
>> requires adding this line to config.txt
>> while still running from the SD card:
>>
>> program_usb_boot_mode=1
>>
>> Then rebooting, and the Pi should boot from the hard disk.
>>
>> However, this is not the whole story.
>>
>> I always installed Raspian on the Pi's using NOOBS. You download a .zip
>> file, extract it to an SD
>> card that is formatted as vfat, and off you go. Very easy.
>>
>> Eventually, I want to copy the running system's SD card to the hard disk
>> to continue from where
>> it is now.
>>
>> I could not find information on how to install Raspian (or NOOBS) to a
>> hard disk, nor how to have
>> the disk partition properly for Raspbian.
>>
>> For example, in this article
>> <https://www.maketecheasier.com/boot-up-raspberry-pi-3-external-hard-disk/>,
>> the author walks through the steps of copying the existing running SD
>> card to the hard disk, but he copies to /dev/sda (the entire disk, not a
>> specific partition on it).
>>
>> So questions:
>>
>> 1. How do I install NOOBS to the hard disk? Do I just format it as vfat
>> and copy the contents of
>> the NOOBS zip to it?
>>
>> 2. How to partition the hard disk for Raspbian?
>>
>> 3. How to make sure that power saving mode would not affect the USB disk?
>>
>> --
>> Khalid M. Baheyeldin
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>>
> --
> Charles McColm
> Computer Recycling: http://www.comprec.org
> Fasteroids: http://www.fasteroids.ca
> Twitter/Identica/Google+: @chaslinux
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>
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