Boot from Compact Flash drive

Support & Help Requests Raspberry Pi
1

Hi,

I want to order my first Raspberry Pi 3 with an extension USB to compact flash board converter.
https://www.voelkner.de/products/897236/pri-x225.jpg
Because I have an SunDisk 32 GB CF Extreme Pro 90 MB/s, UDMA 6 hanging around here,
because I want avoid to buy an mSATA SSD Drive.

My question is:

  1. Is it possible to boot the Linux system direct from the Compact Flash, without SD-Card?
  2. It is faster then a SD-Card over USB?

Regards to all…

2
  1. It may be possible, but I haven’t yet got it to happen with any of my gear
  2. I don’t understand your question - what exactly are you comparing: the booting, or the general running?
    I further don’t understand your pics - the board shown says CF but the interface isnt CF.
    Derek
3

Here the description: http://www.delock.de/produkte/G_62625/merkmale.html?setLanguage=en
I have a SunDisk 32 GB CF Extreme Pro 90 MB/s, UDMA 6, that is not in use at the moment.
There is a work around to boot from USB, see here: https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberrypi/bootmodes/msd.md

My question is, can I do it instead from a USB stick to a CF-Card over the converter/adapter?

Regards…

4

I recognise the bootmodes reference - and have failed to get to the stage where I can do without a SDcard. I can boot raspbian from a USB stick.
I can also run the ubuntu-mate distro from the USB stick, provided I boot from SD card - but it is very slow to start, and I don’t see the runtime ops as being faster than a good SDcard, so I run entirely from SDcard now.
If you get it running, I’ll be interested to see how.
Derek

5

Hi,

I figured during in the meantime out, that the USB’s and Network shares over the separated internal hub. Very bad construction.
Only the SD-Card slot has a dedicated lane to the Broadcom CPU. It was just an Idea. I think I will
save the money for a new 128GB SD-Card instead of the converter. If the development goes like
this, than I have to throw my CF-Card to the garbage :frowning :disappointed: It was a very good Card, R.I.P.