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    Mark Petersen
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Hedgehog 4 boots to BusyBox shell

Hi,
Anyone know why the Hedgehog 4 boots to a BusyBox shell prompt (initramfs) if you try to start with a USB flash drive plugged in? I have a 250Gb SSD drive that I was going to use to save show files on (so they don't get wiped out if I do a full OS upgrade), but no luck so far. I dropped into the BIOS setup and made the USB ports last on the list, but it still does the same. Tries to start... Get the "HES" logo > Get "Starting Console" with the circle-4 logo > drops to a BusyBox Shell prompt. If I pull the flash drive it starts up just fine. I thought for sure moving the USB boot option to last in line would do it, but nothing seems to work. Any ideas?
Oh, and let me be the first to suggest "Pull the flash drive when you boot dummy". That's not a viable option. I'm in a high school performing arts center, so I have a lot of student techs working this console. I don't want to remind them that there's a 250Gb SSD drive waiting to be stolen. Yeah, it's wire tied to the back of the console, but that's easy enough to get around.
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    What's the format set to of the SSD?

    You also don't want to do full installs with the SSD plugged in.
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    It's exFAT. It's a 250Gb Sandisk Extreme: shop.sandisk.com/store/sdiskus/pd/productID.5153191100/varProductID.5153191100

    The only USB device installed when I installed 3.12 was just the flash drive with 3.12 I was installing from. I pulled everything else.
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    Based off of your question, I thought I was going to be the smart guy and formatted the external SSD drive to EXT3. I thought "Ah ha!..." Yeah, well, all I did was prove I'm not as smart as I thought I was and of course that made no difference.
    I think I'll just be patient and await the next response from someone smarter than me. L-)
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    Can you pst a picture or a video of what you are seeing? If it is an actual BusyBox prompt, then that is not a tool in Hog, so the SSD is causing it to open. I know from experience those drives come with extra software from SanDisk. I use one on my mac, but I formatted it as soon as I plugged it in. I haven't tried to use it with my Hog.

    Something to try:
    - Reset BIOS to defaults and save. // There shouldn't be a need to change BIOS settings with this as long as there are no bootable partitions on the drive
    - If it cannot boot after that, perform a full install.
    - If it can boot, then try booting without the USB drive, plug it in, and see if it is in the file browser. If it's there, then you should be okay to boot with it plugged in.
    - If it's not there, reformat the entire drive to Fat32 with one partition.
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    Hi Maegan. I was going to post some screencaps for you, but searching the web I found that it looks like this BusyBox shell thing is a known issue with this particular drive. So, I tried a smaller flash drive I had laying around, and it booted fine. As it did with the other 6 flash / external SSD drives I tried. So, since this is a known issue with this specific SSD, I'm going to say Thank you for your help, and you can consider this resolved since it's not an issue with the console.

    I'll post back any info I find that might be helpful to others, but for now if you have a list of hardware that's incompatible with the HedgeHog 4, you can add the Sandisk Extreme SSD line of external drives. It looks like you're safe to include all models because my search results list 2 or 3 different size drive with the issue, not just the 250Gb model I purchased.

    Thanks again for the help with this issue!
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    No problem! I'm still curious what would happen if you formatted the drive with 1 partition and Fat32. I'd try it on my drive, but it's currently being used as a backup to some important files and I don't want to format that.
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    Hi Maegan. Looks like I spoke too soon. When I tried another SDD drive it did the same thing. Maybe it's a size issue? None of the external drives I'd tried earlier were over 100Gb. The first drive that failed was 250Gb, and this one that's doing it now is 1Tb.
    I did reformat the 250Gb drive to Fat32, single partition and it did the same thing. I actually completely wiped the drive. Deleted the partition table altogether and overwrote each sector with all zeros. Then I created a single partition and formatted it Fat32. I'm going to try a smaller partition and see if that makes a difference. At this point I'm completely shooting in the dark.
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    Well, same thing with a 10Gb Fat32 partition. I'm gonna put this to bed for the night and head home. My brain's frazzled. If you have any ideas feel free to post them and I'll give 'em a shot in the morning.
    As always, I appreciate the help so far. Thanks!
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    Thanks for continuing these efforts!

    - Did you reset the bios back to default?
    - Was it still going to BusyBox?
    - Possible to shoot me an email with videos/photos of whats happening? maegan.wilson@highend.com
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    Hi Maegan,
    Yes I did,
    Yes it is.
    Yes I can! I'll send that shortly.
    Thanks!

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