Raspberry pi3+ as a desktop

21

Hi Graeme,

Sorry for the absence, though this forum would send me an advisory email when there was a new post, would seem not.

Based on you question, are you wanting to use an existing internal drive, or are you referring to external USB drives you have plugged into your old XP machine?

22

Graeme,

I think the best way to get up and running with the OS existing on the USB harddrive is to use software called Bootberry.

You download the microSD image from their website, write the image to the microSD with either ETCHER or Win32Diskimager.

Bootberry then allows you to install multiple operating systems on the one drive. You just select which ones you want from the menu, and Bootberry will download them and install them.

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23

I loaded Raspbian to my external USB HDD took out the SD card and nothing happened, unfortunately the HDD did not spin up till after Pi was halfway through booting up and could not find the OS.
I have resorted to using the SD card for the OS and storing everything on the HDD which seems to work.

24

Hey Graeme,
Just going to pipe in here with some information about booting to an External USB HDD with the Pi 3 - https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberrypi/bootmodes/msd.md

25

Hi Aidan and Graeme

I could be wrong, so please correct me, but I believe the boot from USB drive feature was only implemented with the Pi 3 on wards, Also, once implemented with the command, it cannot be undone?

Lloyd

26

Aidan,
That document is what I followed to get Raspbian onto my HDD.
The issue I have is that the HDD stays asleep till after the PI is part way through booting and does not see the HDD in time to boot from it.
I could used a USB stick, but advice from people on the PI forum there is no advantage over using an SD card, plus I would lose the use of a USB port.
So unless I can find a way to wake up my HDD which is probably way over my head I am will just run the PI the way it is now as its working.
Lloyd,
Discussions on the forum lead me to believe that the boot from USB is a function present on the 3B+ but for others the One Time Programming (OTP) has to be changed by inserting a line of code. Once this is done it cannot be reversed.
At present my PI is doing the task I bought it for and that is using it as a desktop machine to replace my old steam driven XP machine.

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