After that, we won’t need the SD card anymore.Įnabling USB boot mode is easy. This will set a bit in the Raspberry Pi’s OTP (One Time Programmable) memory, allowing the device to be booted from a USB mass storage device. First, we’ll have to add a config option, and then we’ll have to reboot the Pi.

Now that we have Raspbian on a microSD card, we can enable the Raspberry Pi’s USB boot mode. Now that we’re up to date, let’s move on. If you don’t have Raspbian installed yet, you can check out our easy guide on how to install Raspbian on the Raspberry Pi.Īfter installing Raspbian, let’s install possible updates: sudo apt-get update The only way to boot to Raspbian right now is to put it on a microSD card, so, ironically enough, this how-to on booting from USB begins with us booting from a microSD card! But we can’t do that until we enable USB boot mode, and we actually need Raspbian in order to do that. We’re going to end this tutorial by booting to Raspbian from a USB drive. With those warnings out of the way, let’s move on to the project! How to boot your Raspberry Pi from a USB mass storage device Step 1: Install and update Raspbian With that said, this sounds much scarier than it is: your Pi will still boot preferentially from the microSD card, if one is plugged in. The USB compatibility issue will only affect some of us, but the next warning is relevant to us all: setting the boot mode is permanent. According to the Raspberry Pi Foundation, a couple of non-working examples are the Kingston DataTraveler 100 G3 32 GB and the Verbatim PinStripe 64 GB.

Making that happen is a pretty easy thing to do, and it’s the subject of this how-to.Ī word of warning: the new boot mode is in its experimental stage, so it might not work with your USB stick or hard drive. But since the release of the Raspberry Pi 3, new Pis have been able to boot from a USB mass storage device as well. By default, the Raspberry Pi boots from a microSD card.

Start from usb device