Raspi Boot Issues

Since Christmas, two of my Pis have been out of action because two of the USB <-> SATA connectors I bought are "JMICRON" controllers, which do not play nice with USB boot on the Raspi 4bs.^[1]

distro@raspi-1:~ $ lsusb
Bus 002 Device 003: ID 152d:0583 JMicron Technology Corp. / JMicron USA Technology Corp. JMS583Gen 2 to PCIe Gen3x2 Bridge
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 0781:5591 SanDisk Corp. Ultra Flair
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 2109:3431 VIA Labs, Inc. Hub
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
distro@raspi-1:~ $

For comparison against a working USB SSD adapter:

distro@raspi-3:~ $ lsusb
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 13fd:5910 Initio Corporation External
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 2109:3431 VIA Labs, Inc. Hub
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
distro@raspi-3:~ $

The solution is to not use JMicron controllers or enabling quirks, which disables TRIMing on the SSD, decreasing lifespan and performance.

Read more on how to make it work on this blog post.

1. https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=327126 ↩︎