Jetson Orin Nano Stuck in Boot / Recovery Loop After NVMe Migration Attempt

Robotics & Edge Computing Jetson Systems Jetson Orin Nano
1

The Jetson Orin Nano initially booted successfully from a microSD card containing a JetPack image. Then I tried to improve performance by moving the root filesystem from the microSD card to an NVMe SSD.

  1. Installed an NVMe SSD in the Jetson.
  2. Partitioned and formatted the NVMe drive.
  3. Mounted the NVMe under:

/mnt/nvme

  1. Copied the existing root filesystem from the microSD card to the NVMe using rsync.

sudo rsync -aAXv --info=progress2 / /mnt/nvme
–exclude={“/dev/“,”/proc/”,“/sys/“,”/tmp/”,“/run/“,”/mnt/”,“/media/*”,“/lost+found”}

Files Modified

1. /etc/fstab

  • Replacing the root mount entry with the UUID of the NVMe.

  • Keeping /boot/efi pointing to the SD card EFI partition.

UUID=<NVME_UUID> / ext4 defaults 0 1
UUID=<SD_EFI_UUID> /boot/efi vfat defaults 0 1

2. /boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf

root=/dev/mmcblk0p1 Changed to: root=/dev/nvme0n1p1 rw rootwait

This was the last major configuration file modified before the system stopped booting correctly.

Problems Encountered After modifying extlinux.conf:

  • The Jetson entered Emergency Mode during boot.
  • Errors related to: Failed to mount /boot/efi

Later:

  • The system stopped booting entirely from the SD card.
  • Even after removing the NVMe SSD, the Jetson still failed to boot normally.

Recovery / Troubleshooting Attempts

  1. UEFI / Boot Menu Actions Entered the UEFI menu using ESC and F11. The following actions were attempted: Boot Manager Verified that: - UEFI SD Device
  2. Boot Maintenance Manager Performed: F9 → Reset to Defaults and then: F10 → Save
  3. NVIDIA Configuration Menu Entered: Device Manager → NVIDIA Configuration and again performed: F9 → Reset to Defaults F10 → Save
  4. Boot From File Attempted manual boot from: EFI/BOOT/BOOTAA64.efi
  5. Result: Returned to black screen / failed boot.

SD Card Reflash Attempt To rule out SD corruption:

  1. Reflashed the microSD card with the same JetPack image that had previously worked.
  2. Used balenaEtcher for flashing.
  3. Verified that Windows detected multiple Linux partitions afterward (expected behavior).
  4. Reinserted the reflashed SD card into the Jetson.

Result: System still failed to boot normally.

Current Status

  1. Jetson reaches UEFI / Boot Manager successfully.
  2. SD card is detected correctly.
  3. Boot process begins but does not complete.
  4. Often falls into recovery attempts or black screen.
  5. System no longer boots into Linux successfully.

Please advice what can I do, currently I dont have Linux PC for recovery
Best regards,

Ilan

5

Hi,

We suggest to download sdk manager to full flash the device.

Thanks