BATC Forum

Thanks to KA5BBC and his Moncaso 932 case with a usb card reader on the front I had the idea to try a usb sd card reader with the Portsdown software sd memory card in it plugged into the usb on the raspberry Pi.
After a few flashing lights the system started and worked as normal. This was on a Raspberry 3B+ and Portsdown 2020.
So if you want a Raspberry Pi built into a case but want to change the sd card easily then try puttng the sd card into a sd card reader instead of the sd slot on the raspberry Pi.
Will it slow the raspberry Pi down? Could this lead to multiple sd card choices? will this work with a ssd?
Over to you.....

Martin G8LCE

I have since found that you cannot install the operating system (clean install ) from a SD card reader. This SD card in a SD reader may only work once it is programmed with the operating system and Portsdown 4 in the RPi,s SD card slot.

Martin G8LCE

The Raspberry Pi forum seems to indicate that there is a non-volatile flag that has to be set in the Raspberry Pi hardware to enable USB booting. Presumably this is now being done the first time the Pi is booted from the normal SD slot. It seems to be a fairly new addition to the operating system.

And yes, apparently it will boot from a USB hard drive or SSD.

There are many tutorials on YouTube etc showing how to boot and run from USB with either an SSD or even M.2.
Once I have a stable setup and ready to close the box, for now, I will rebuild with OS and software to boot from SSD to security, stability, and speed.
Mostly I am thinking about using the USB SD card reader for audio/media files like custom testcards.