MiniBolt (PC version)

Boot from microSD instead of external drive

If the Raspberry Pi is not able to boot from your external drive, you can boot from a microSD card and use the external drive to store all the application data.

Difficulty: Easy

Steps required

To boot from a microSD card and store the data on an external drive, there are a few additional steps compared to the default RaMiX guide. Below is a summary of the main differences, with detailed guidance in the following sections.

  1. Operating system:

    • write the operating system to the microSD card instead of the external drive

  2. Configuration:

    • attach the external drive

    • test the USB3 performance

    • format the drive

    • mount the drive to /data

Operating system

When writing Raspberry Pi OS to the boot medium, use a high-quality microSD card of 8+ GB instead of the external drive.

System configuration

Connect your external drive to the Raspberry Pi using one of the blue USB3 ports.

Follow the Configuration section until you reach the Data directory section, continuing with the instructions below.

In case your external drive shows poor performance, follow the Fix bad USB3 performance instructions, as mentioned in the guide.

Format external drive

We will now format the external drive. As a server installation, the Linux native file system Ext4 is the best choice for the external hard disk.

  • List all block devices with additional information. The list shows the devices (e.g. sda) and the partitions they contain (e.g. sda1)

lsblk -o NAME,MOUNTPOINT,UUID,FSTYPE,SIZE,LABEL,MODEL

Example of expected output:

NAME        MOUNTPOINT UUID                                 FSTYPE   SIZE LABEL  MODEL
sda                                                                931.5G        Ext_SSD
└─sda1                 3aab0952-3ed4-4652-b203-d994c4fdff20 ext4   931.5G
mmcblk0                                                             14.8G
|-mmcblk0p1 /boot      DBF3-0E3A                            vfat     256M boot
`-mmcblk0p2 /          b73b1dc9-6e12-4e68-9d06-1a1892663226 ext4    14.6G rootfs

  • If your drive does not contain any partitions, follow this How to Create a Disk Partitions in Linux guide first.

  • Make a note of the partition name of your external drive (in this case “sda1”).

  • Format the partition on the external drive with Ext4 (use [NAME] from above, e.g. sda1)

Attention: this will delete all existing data on the external drive!

sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/[NAME]

Mount external drive

The external drive is then attached to the file system and becomes available as a regular folder (this is called “mounting”).

  • List the block devices once more and copy the new partition’s UUID into a text editor on your main machine

lsblk -o NAME,MOUNTPOINT,UUID,FSTYPE,SIZE,LABEL,MODEL

Example of expected output:

NAME        MOUNTPOINT UUID                                 FSTYPE   SIZE LABEL  MODEL
sda                                                                931.5G        Ext_SSD
└─sda1                 3aab0952-3ed4-4652-b203-d994c4fdff20 ext4   931.5G
mmcblk0                                                             14.8G
|-mmcblk0p1 /boot      DBF3-0E3A                            vfat     256M boot
`-mmcblk0p2 /          b73b1dc9-6e12-4e68-9d06-1a1892663226 ext4    14.6G rootfs

  • Edit the fstab file

sudo nano /etc/fstab

  • Add the following as a new line at the end, replacing 123456 with your own UUID

UUID=123456 /data ext4 rw,nosuid,dev,noexec,noatime,nodiratime,auto,nouser,async,nofail 0 2

more: complete fstab guide

  • Create the data directory as a mount point

sudo mkdir /data

  • Assing to the admin user as the owner of the (/data) folder

sudo chown admin:admin /data

  • Make the directory immutable to prevent data from being written on the microSD card if the external drive is not mounted

sudo chattr +i /data

  • Mount all drives

sudo mount -a

  • Check the file system. Is “/data” listed?

df -h /data
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1       938G   77M  891G   1% /data

Move swap file to New Drive

The swap file acts as slower memory and is essential for system stability. MicroSD cards are not very performant and degrade over time under constant read/write activity. Therefore, we move the swap file to the external drive and increase its size as well.

  • Edit the dphys-swapfile configuration file

sudo nano -l +12 /etc/dphys-swapfile

  • Uncomment the entry CONF_SWAPSIZE by deleting the # in front of it, and editing to match this

CONF_SWAPFILE=/data/swapfile

  • Comment the CONF_SWAPSIZE by placing a # in front of it

#CONF_SWAPSIZE=200

  • Recreate and activate new swapfile

sudo systemctl restart dphys-swapfile

Continue with the guide

That’s it: your Raspberry Pi now boots from the microSD card while the data directory /data is located on the external drive.

You can now continue with the Remote access section

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