Element14 RPi Desktop

Question

If one were to place a mSata hard drive into this unit, is the unit able to boot and run off of the mSata drive? Or does it still need the micro SD card to boot?

https://canada.newark.com/element14/pi-desktop/accessory-type-desktop-computer/dp/05AC3756#ProductAccessories

Gough Lui · Answer

It seems your question is answered in the manual - see page 10 of http://www.farnell.com/datasheets/2362522.pdf : If you read the attached link, you will see that this relies on programming the OTP - https://github.com/pi-desktop/pi-desktop/blob/master/Boot-From-a-USB-Mass-Storage-Device/Boot-From-a-USB-Mass-Storage-De… It's not without its problems - some people do complain that it doesn't work (e.g. https://www.element14.com/community/message/244194/l/pi-desktop-wont-boot-from-msata-pci-e-ssd#244194 ), doens't work reliably on a reboot ( PI desktop: unable to reboot when booting from SSD , https://github.com/pi-desktop/deb-make/issues/2 , Pi Desktop very disappointing ) or it takes longer to boot without the microSD card. I encourage you to do your own research on this rather than expecting someone else to pony up the answers. Full disclosure - I don't own one of these cases myself and have not tried it myself. - Gough