Raspbery Pi - Boot from USB Flash Drive

Submitted by jeffh on #1

Hello,

I have a Raspberry Pi 3B (might be a 3B+ actually) configured to boot Raspberry Pi OS from a USB flash drive instead of booting from the Micro SD card. I've found USB flash drives to be a lot more reliable than Micro SD cards. The remote location where the RPi is installed at has VERY unreliable power. I even had to install a RPi UPS on it.

The only other option I can think of is to revert back to using a Micro SD Card but to keep it in read-only mode so there's no chance for it to get corrupted.

I'm running into some issues where the RPi becomes unreachable if the device loses power and I'm concerned that VirtualHere might be attempting to manage the USB flash drive which is knocking the RPi offline.

I thought I excluded the USB flash drive in the VirtualHere configuration but I did it 3+ years ago and don't remember exactly what I did.

Is there a recommended approach to ensure VirtualHere doesn't attempt to control the USB flash drive?

Thanks in advance!

Submitted by Michael on Sat, 2025/05/03 - 07:41

#2

Yes you can completely ignore the USB drive.

Install the virtualhere server on the pi and run the virtualhere client.

Then right click on the USB disk in the virtualhere client and select Ignore and ignore just that drive if it has a serial number. 

(Even if you don't ignore the drive and just run virtualhere it wont use or connect to the drive unless you "Auto-Use All" or double click on the drive in the virtualhere client or select "Use")

 

Submitted by jeffh on Sat, 2025/05/03 - 09:25

#3

OK - I'm pretty sure that's exactly what I did. The RPi is currently unreachable and it takes an act of congress to get to the site where its located, so it will be a few weeks before I can get over there to see what's going on. Chances are good it's completely unrelated... I just wanted to make sure I understood what needed to be done to cover all of my bases.

On a completely separate note - I just saw the new hub you guys released! It's HOT! I'm definitely going to pick one up for this location. The ability to individually control the power to each port is a game changer!

Thanks so much for getting back to me so quickly!