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Can Raspberrypi boot initially from USB stick

Former Member

Hi,

 

As i usually install software via USB stick i wonder, will RaspberryPI also install when bootable USB stick is inserted into the USB slot?

 

E.g. can i bypass in this manner the creation of the bootable SD card.
And just have the install process of the image do the job for me, just like an average installation on a disk. In this case it will be a SD card.

 

Thanks for sharing.

Parents

  • Most modern BIOS chips allow / can be updated to set a USB port device as bootable.

    I can't see any reason why this should be any different.

  • in reply to Former Member

    One very clear and obvious reason why this is different is because the Raspberry Pi's architecture does not have or need a BIOS chip at all.  There are *no* choices about the initial boot, no "BIOS settings" to be made or altered at all - the GPU powers up and has a very very small set of hardcoded instructions that say "Go initialise the SD card and look for the first FAT32 partition and look for a firmware file there".  That firmware then kickstarts the ARM processor, which loads a kernel from the SD card.  After that, the standard distributions will typically mount a root filesystem from the SD card as well, but it's possible to mount a root filesystem from some other USB device instead - no choice in the matter till this point though, and absolutely impossible to boot initially without an SD card with the right firmware files on it.

  • in reply to Former Member

    Hmmmm interesting - BIOSlessness...............

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