Using usb with pi and xbmc
#1
Hello guys, im new to xbmc with raspberry pi and i've seen somebody on youtube running xbmc on there raspberry using usb, is this possible? and if so how do you setup your usb to boot with xbmc running on the pi?

Thanks for your time Big Grin
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#2
Might help to post the youtube link as I'm not clear what you mean exactly. You can install XMBC onto the PI and then access movies on a USB stick, that's simple enough to do. The USB memory stick just acts like a drive to XBMC.
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#3
sorry i meant actually running xbmc on the memory stick other then using the sd card? ...
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#4
PI won't run without an SD card since the SD card is where it gets its firmware from to load up. There is no other way to tell the PI to load from the USB port as the PI has no such thing as a BIOS...it expects firmware to be on an SD card.

As for installing xmbc on the usb memory stick, that's easy enough to do since the USB stick just looks like a drive to the PI, but not sure that really buys you anything since you're required to have the SD card to boot.
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#5
Thanks for the reply buddie! think ill stick with the SD card for the time been just got to find the best and fastest that works with the pi now!! ... any clues?
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#6
raspbmc van be installed easy on the usb. check the raspbmc forums. faster read speeds guarantee. (with a decent usb)
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#7
The pi runs better on the usb I have noticed and alot safer when overclocking it is not recommended to overclock on SD card as issues with corrupting the card. I run on usb now and i think the menus are snappier. Just my .02.
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#8
(2012-12-06, 00:22)dvandriesen Wrote: The pi runs better on the usb I have noticed and alot safer when overclocking it is not recommended to overclock on SD card as issues with corrupting the card. I run on usb now and i think the menus are snappier. Just my .02.

D'you have any links on how to boot from sd but run xbmc from USB?
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#9
(2012-12-06, 00:22)dvandriesen Wrote: The pi runs better on the usb I have noticed and alot safer when overclocking it is not recommended to overclock on SD card as issues with corrupting the card. I run on usb now and i think the menus are snappier. Just my .02.

You'll have the same problem with a USB stick...flash memory is flash memory...has nothing to do with SD cards in general.
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#10
SD cards in general are a lot slower than some USB sticks.

Though if you have a 512 MB R-Pi, you can use OpenELEC and it will load a lot of stuff into RAM, making it even faster than USB.
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#11
(2012-12-06, 18:30)Ned Scott Wrote: Though if you have a 512 MB R-Pi, you can use OpenELEC and it will load a lot of stuff into RAM, making it even faster than USB.
I didn't get much benefit from RAM based OpenELEC.
Most of the slowness in the GUI is from reading from the remote sources, the sql database and the thumbnails.
None of these are in the read only rootfs which is in RAM.

(the RAM base OpenELEC did initially load quite a bit faster for me)
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#12
(2012-12-06, 18:35)popcornmix Wrote: I didn't get much benefit from RAM based OpenELEC.
Most of the slowness in the GUI is from reading from the remote sources, the sql database and the thumbnails.
None of these are in the read only rootfs which is in RAM.

(the RAM base OpenELEC did initially load quite a bit faster for me)

Fair point. Thumbnails are probably the biggest bottle neck area, if I had to guess.
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#13
Hi
I did this http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid...pid1246365 using an external hd formatted to etx4 and openelec (wont work if ntfs or fat formatted)
made s bit of difference but nothing earth shattering
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