Im debugging all day, trying to get my RPi 4b to boot from SSD over USB again. Earlier this week it stopped working and keeps blinking with a green LED thrice or four times. Looking this up, the boot files might've been corrupted. I copied the SSD by mounting it on WSL and making a backup (this asserted that the SSD itself is fine) and flashed it using Raspbian imager 2.0.6 with Raspbian Trixie lite 64 bit. Connected the SSD to the pi again but still the same 3 rapidly firing leds.
I thought it mustve been the EEPROM on the pi itself which was corrupted. I took a SD card, flashed it using the utility from the imager but no avail.
Then I tried loading the Image on the sd card itself, which allowed the Pi to boot. I got SSH access, changed the bootorder manually using sudo raspi-config but nope didnt work either. Redid this once more but this time with updated raspi-config and saw that using lsusb the disk was reporting properly. Nope, no booting whenever the disk is connected at boottime.
Then I found this forum post from 2017: viewtopic.php?f=29&t=196778. was a long shot but in the end it didnt work. I loaded up the image on the sd once more, downloaded the usb-boot.zip to the pi and copied the sd card to the ssd. Shutdown, removed the SD and booted up but those same blinking leds turned up once again.
Im losing my mind over this issue as I cant pinpoint what the exact problem is. Its not the SSD as I can mount it, its not the SATA to usb cable as I replaced it, its not the EEPROM on the RPi itself as once I set it back to booting from SD it works again.
What am I missing? Any pointers would be great
I thought it mustve been the EEPROM on the pi itself which was corrupted. I took a SD card, flashed it using the utility from the imager but no avail.
Then I tried loading the Image on the sd card itself, which allowed the Pi to boot. I got SSH access, changed the bootorder manually using sudo raspi-config but nope didnt work either. Redid this once more but this time with updated raspi-config and saw that using lsusb the disk was reporting properly. Nope, no booting whenever the disk is connected at boottime.
Then I found this forum post from 2017: viewtopic.php?f=29&t=196778. was a long shot but in the end it didnt work. I loaded up the image on the sd once more, downloaded the usb-boot.zip to the pi and copied the sd card to the ssd. Shutdown, removed the SD and booted up but those same blinking leds turned up once again.
Im losing my mind over this issue as I cant pinpoint what the exact problem is. Its not the SSD as I can mount it, its not the SATA to usb cable as I replaced it, its not the EEPROM on the RPi itself as once I set it back to booting from SD it works again.
What am I missing? Any pointers would be great
Statistics: Posted by scrappyme — Sat Feb 14, 2026 8:25 pm — Replies 0 — Views 5