Flashing JP4.6.1 to SATA SSD

Hello All,
I’m trying to flash JP4.6.1 to my Xavier NX production module.
the board is having SATA interface for the
SSD not NVMe.
I have formatted the disk in (GPT) format and then created partition with (EXT4) format and got /dev/sda .
flashing using SDK manger and selecting nvme for storage will fail
flashing to usb or custom (./nvautoflash.sh --storage sda) will flash to the emmc and the installation will fail because of low disk space however the jetson will boot.
in the jetson it seems that the tool will copy files and make some partitions to the ssd but it is not mounted and the root emmc partition is the one mounted as root file
it look like the tool is able to flash to both emmc and ssd (not sure if the files and partitions are the JP4.6.1 in the ssd) but the root is always emmc
I have attached to photos one for the ssd and the other is for emmc in the disks application.
please support on this issue.


Please be aware that if your carrier board has a “SATA” slot, then it is something added by the board vendor.

And that “SATA” is not really a SATA to jetson because jetson NX does not have a native SATA port and SATA controller.

Which means using the default tool provided by us cannot flash it.

thank you for the information,

if the sdk manger is not suitable to flash sata, can you please share other methods to flash it.

also how can I mount this drive as root? Ii think this could solve the issue.

There is no method to flash it. The only external drive we support to flash is usb drive and pcie based nvme drive.

Since it cannot be flashed, you need to prepare the rootfs manually in somewhere else and then plug the drive back to the board.

With method similar to below “Flashing to a USB Drive” section, but it should be your SATA disk.

https://docs.nvidia.com/jetson/archives/l4t-archived/l4t-3261/index.html#page/Tegra%20Linux%20Driver%20Package%20Development%20Guide/flashing.html#wwpID0E01O0HA

Modify the flash.sh parameter to the root device name.

For example, originally we use

sudo ./flash jetson-balabala mmcblk0p1. This will mount mmcblk0p1 drive to root. Which is the emmc.

For your case, you need to modify mmcblk0p1 to the SATA drive.

I have contacted the board supplier and they provided the BSP and everything went fine.
I installed the BSP and all other packages and able to boot directly from the SATA SSD.

1 Like

This topic was automatically closed 14 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.