I’ve suffered many SD card and USB flash drive failures and wanted to move to a hard drive for the root file system, but it isn’t without problems depending on the USB hard drive enclosure / cable you have.
I have two USB enclosures and both fail to boot, although they can be mounted and accessed without problems when the file system is on an SD card. I tried adding RootDelay and BootDelay options to the cmdline.txt file, different powered USB hubs, different power supplies, different kernel images, using UUID instead of device reference to the root file system etc. etc. all without success.
Boot fails at the point of identifying the USB bridge of the enclosure.
It seems from the post here https://github.com/raspberrypi/linux/issues/75 and here http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=48834 that some USB bridges are not supported by the Kernel and therefore will not boot.
My enclosures are a Bipra 80GB 2.5 inch from here http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B004LK47R2/ref=oh_details_o01_s00_i00...
And a Samsung IDE enclosure bought in 2006 (only identification on it is 3H06102596BA).
I’ve now ordered the USB hard drive cable shown on the Emoncms hard drive page http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B009C6O1BM/ hopefully that will work.
Please comment on which USB enclosures / cable you have tried. It would be useful to have a short list of those enclosures that are known to fail and those that have been successfully used.
Re: Raspberry Pi Hard Drive Root File System Problems
I have one of these:
http://www.maplin.co.uk/p/2535-inch-sata-usb-dock-a83hq
This works with the Raspberry Pi but have only very briefly tested it. I don't recall the chipset used.
Re: Raspberry Pi Hard Drive Root File System Problems
The above USB hard drive cable boots perfectly with an IDE hard drive, but it seems a separate power supply is needed with a SATA drive.
Re: Raspberry Pi Hard Drive Root File System Problems
For a SATA 2.5" drive this enclosure http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/291035236894?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1497.l2649 also works perfectly and its cheap.