Booting from SD Card with SSD Storage vs full SSD Install

MikeS82

Hello,

I am about to start a new build and have a couple of minor questions and some ideas that I wanted to bounce off others before getting started.

Here is what I have:
---Raspberry Pi 4 Model B with 4GB RAM
---Argon One Case with M.2 SATA add-on
---Argon One 18W Power Supply (5.25V,3.5A)
---Western Digital Blue 1TB M.2 SATA SSD
---SanDisk Micro SD Cards: Ultras in 32,64, and 128GB; Extreme in 128GB
---I have downloaded the official retropie-buster-4.8-rpi4_400 image file.

I bought the Raspberry Pi 4 and the Argon One case in November 2020 to run everything on the SD card, but life got in the way, and it has been unused. Then, a couple of months ago, I saw that Argon had released the M.2 SATA add-on, and I bought it along with the WD SSD. The plan became to use the SD card as the boot drive and the SSD as storage for ROMs, scraped data, etc. This way, if the OS crashed, at least all game info would be safe.

Then I thought about maybe omitting the SD card and running everything on the SSD; I don’t think I’ll load enough games to fill up 1TB, even with video scrapes. I have read some who say that the performance increase from SSD boot is negligible, and others who have said that their builds ran much better from the SSD and that PS1 games seemed to load a bit faster. I was hoping to hear from others who have tried both setups and what their opinions were. I would create backup images no matter what, so even if I run everything from the SSD, it wouldn’t be that big of a deal if it crashed.

The build will primarily be for console emulation, though I plan to install Kodi from the optional packages; I don’t plan on installing any of the arcade or PC emulators. I don’t know if this would influence anyone’s decision or not, but I figured I might as well put it out there just in case.

The only real question I have right now concerns the Pi itself. The Retropie 4.7 release notes state that you can flash it directly to a USB drive, but the Pi4’s boot EEPROM might need an update beforehand; I assume this also goes for the 4.8 release. As the SSD connects to the Pi through the USB bus, I imagine this also requires the EEPROM update. I assume that mine is probably old enough to require the update, and as I said earlier, I’ve already downloaded the 4.8 image file. If I burn it to an SD card first, boot it up, and update all packages (including underlying OS), will the EEPROM also update? If yes, then I should now be able to remove the SD card, burn the official image, and boot from the SSD, correct?

Anyway, this is where the project sits right now. Does anyone have any thoughts/opinions on using an SD card for boot and an SSD for storage versus running entirely from an SSD that they wouldn’t mind sharing?

Regards,

Mike

sleve_mcdichael

@MikeS82 said in Booting from SD Card with SSD Storage vs full SSD Install:

If I burn it to an SD card first, boot it up, and update all packages (including underlying OS), will the EEPROM also update?

It should, yeah. You can also upgrade the OS packages without all the RetroPie packages if you want by doing RetroPie-Setup > configuration/tools > raspbiantools > upgrade Raspbian packages.

This is equivalent to doing a dist-upgrade from command line:

sudo apt update && sudo apt dist-upgrade

Or you could update just the EEPROM:

sudo apt update && sudo apt install rpi-eeprom

mitu

In addition to what @sleve_mcdichael advised, just want to add that booting from USB is included in the Sept. 2020 EEPROM, so chances are that your Pi already supports it.
You can check the EEPROM version by either looking at version displayed on the boot screen or by running sudo rpi-eeprom-update, that will show something like:

*** UPDATE AVAILABLE ***
BOOTLOADER: update available
   CURRENT: Thu  3 Sep 12:11:43 UTC 2020 (1599135103)
    LATEST: Tue 25 Jan 14:30:41 UTC 2022 (1643121041)
   RELEASE: default (/lib/firmware/raspberrypi/bootloader/default)
            Use raspi-config to change the release.

  VL805_FW: Dedicated VL805 EEPROM
     VL805: up to date
   CURRENT: 000138a1
    LATEST: 000138a1

And yes, using a SSD speeds things up, though not so much for the emulation.

MikeS82

Thanks @sleve_mcdichael and @mitu. I think I'll just flash it straight to he SSD and see what happens. It will either boot or it wont; and if it doesn't, then I'll flash an SD card. It does make a lot more sense to update only update the EEPROM or OS packages rather than he entire Retropie setup if I'm just going to be swapping the card out for the SSD anyway.

steptoe

As suggested, PI4 fully supports amd is designed to boot from SSD or external hard drive with no need for an SD card to be left in the PI

I used a similiar method to this on the PI3 I use for KODI/RetroPie, but should still work from the PI4 if you don't want to reinstall everything from scratch on the PI4

You DO have to leave the SD card in though, as it reads the boot sequence from the SD card before passing all control to the external SSD or hard drive

https://www.maketecheasier.com/boot-up-raspberry-pi-3-external-hard-disk/

mitu

@steptoe said in Booting from SD Card with SSD Storage vs full SSD Install:

You DO have to leave the SD card in though, as it reads the boot sequence from the SD card before passing all control to the external SSD or hard drive

No, that's not required on the Pi4.