# Booting a converted RPi3 image from SDD

**URL:** <https://hub.mender.io/t/booting-a-converted-rpi3-image-from-sdd/1690>\
**Category:** General Discussions\
**Created:** [March 25, 2020, 7:35am UTC](https://hub.mender.io/t/booting-a-converted-rpi3-image-from-sdd/1690 "2020-03-25T07:35:24Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
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**Author:** ![mirzak](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/hub.mender.io/mirzak/32/2056_2.png) [@mirzak](https://hub.mender.io/u/mirzak)\
**Post date:** [March 26, 2020, 9:50am UTC](https://hub.mender.io/t/booting-a-converted-rpi3-image-from-sdd/1690/2 "2020-03-26T09:50:37Z")

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Thinking a bit more about this, I now realize that it is probably not as easy as initially suggested.

On Raspberry Pi 3 we use U-Boot as boot loader which is required to integrate Mender to be able to switch between partitions.

The integration that is done in U-Boot is pretty much hard-coded to to use SD as boot medium. You can find the U-Boot integration [here](https://github.com/mendersoftware/uboot-mender/commits/mender-rpi-2019.01).

To support booting from SSD (from USB) you would need adjust U-Boot to:

- Store the environment on SSD (USB storage) instead of MMC. I am not sure if this is even possible, as SSD is a USB storage device in U-Boot which is a “hot plugged”
- Adjust the [mender\_config\_defines.h](https://github.com/mendersoftware/uboot-mender/commit/ccf5d4f1ccaeffb12dba65963914360d0532ec1f) to match booting from USB instead of SD
- Adjust the boot command script to load files from USB instead of SD
  - This is the `boot.scr` which is generated [here](https://github.com/mendersoftware/mender-convert-integration-scripts/blob/master/build-uboot-rpi.sh#L56-L69)

On a stock Raspbian SSD boot probably works out-of-the-box but this is because they do not use U-Boot.

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_[View the full topic](https://hub.mender.io/t/booting-a-converted-rpi3-image-from-sdd/1690)._
