gregoberfield wrote: Should update to specify that with the new bootloader you can avoid using a microSD card entirely and boot and run off the external M.2 drive. I've got it working right now. One less failure point and allows you to do everything off the SSD.

Additionally, you can always keep an updated microSD card around in case of disk failure - but SSDs are pretty robust.

It's as simple as just blowing the Stellarmate image onto the SSD and then plugging it into the USB3 port on your Pi (I'm using a Pi4 for this). If your bootloader is post Sept 2020 and you have no microsd card in it'll boot directly off the SSD.

Reference: www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardwa...ypi/bootmodes/msd.md


I thought it might be helpful to share my experience of this, it was not quite this simple.
Using a Pi4 8Gb, updating the boot loader (see www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardwa...errypi/booteeprom.md ) was simple, but the result was not an 'automatic' change to being able to boot from USB.
I needed to edit the boot loader config (see www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardwa...bootloader_config.md ) which seemed to be simple, but the changes I made did not ever seem to be applied when I rebooted.
It turns out that despite the linked EEPROM page saying otherwise, I had to remove (actually I just renamed) the existing bootcode.bin file before I could successfully apply any changed to the boot loader config. It is still a pretty simple change overall, but the information provided seems a little misleading.

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