I was wondering if any one has reimaged a NVMe Base once they load the OS on it? I got in a hurry and loaded the full OS when I wanted to load the Lite OS. Now the imager can’t see the NVMe. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
It would probably be easiest to boot from an SD card to erase/reformat your SSD - I don’t think RPi Imager will let you do anything with the drive you’re booting from?
I actually boot from sd card and it didn’t see the nvme base as an option in imager…
And i verified that it was reading from the sdcard
Sounds like there might be something else going on then - is your NVMe drive showing up in lsblk?
It looks like it ts still booting to the NVMe,
NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS
mmcblk0 179:0 0 119.1G 0 disk
├─mmcblk0p1 179:1 0 512M 0 part
└─mmcblk0p2 179:2 0 118.6G 0 part
nvme0n1 259:0 0 476.9G 0 disk
├─nvme0n1p1 259:1 0 512M 0 part /boot/firmware
└─nvme0n1p2 259:2 0 476.4G 0 part /
When I run imager it only give me the option to image the sd card.
Can I “hot swap” aka plug the NVMe base in to the RPI after it boots?
You should only connect/disconnect PCIe stuff whilst the Pi’s turned off.
There should be an option in sudo raspi-config (I think it’s under 'advanced options`) to set the boot order so it boots from the SD card first?
I did 6 advanced options , A4 boot order, B1 SD card boot. but it still boots to the NVMe “i think” how do I verify where is boots from?
I would be Ok with the option of totally wiping the NVMe and then just reloading it.
@hel , l So I can boot from the SD card (only if the NVMe is not attached) otherwise It only boots to the NVMe, even though I set the advanced options to boot to SD card. any suggestions?
Hmm, I’m not sure why it’s so keen to boot from NVMe - but you could try installing over the network if you have an ethernet cable handy?
You’ll need to flash the ‘network boot’ image to an SD card - you can find it in Raspberry Pi Imager under ‘misc utility images’. Hopefully you should then be able to re-install to your SSD without Pi OS getting in the way :)
Is there a guide out there on how I would go about re-installing over the network boot
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I guess one option is to boot to the NVMe and then delete something that it needs to boot up? Delete the config.txt etc
Another option is to restore the factory firmware. That I would think would set it back to booting from the SD Card.
Open the Pi Imager, then under the OS Selection select Misc utility images. And then the "Restore the factory settings and change boot priority’’ option.
They could also use armbian and sudo apt-get rpi-imager.
Using Armbian(with my rk3588 &rk3566 boards) and rpi imager works well for me to boot from an sd or emmc and burn something like an ssd in an onboard m.2 slots. I believe armbian jammy you can mount right from gui and dont need the command prompt.