Ras Pi 3 - Boot from mSATA (no SD card

The first point is – it works (I am currently using a Ras Pi 3B+ with no SD card to post this. See note 1-)

My other early observations are:

Only available for Ras Pi 3 – not earlier versions.

It is advertised as a one way change (ie permanent bit set on the Ras Pi.

Formatting an mSATA USB disc with faked ‘partitions’ as if it was an SDcard works and the Pi boots from the Fat32fs::PiBoot partition with the usual files (bootcode/bin etc)

The filecore ‘partition’ on the mSATA is then limited in size to the 2GB normally available with an SDcard (although with faster access and more reliability, I hope)

If the Fat32fs and Filecore partitions are put on separate USB devices then the Pi can boot with a much larger filecore disc – I have it working with 256 GB.

I assume that other USB mass storage will work as well (eg HDD, SSD, Pen Drive, etc) although I have not tried any other type of drives)

Confusingly, left clicking on the drive :4 icon opens the Fat32fs ::piBoot partition, whilst right clicking opens the Filecore partition, although both will dismount so the other can be accessed.

As expected, trying to access the SDcard results in a ‘disc drive is empty error’ message. I have the SDFSfiler unplugged to avoid this.

Note 1: I am using a USB network adapter for the time being.