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I have Rasbmc installed to a USB data stick, and it boots fine. If however, I have another usb hdd plugged in during boot, it throws the "kernel panic cannot mount root file system" error. This same hdd works fine with the raspbmc if it is plugged in after the system boots.

This same setup with raspbmc installed to the sd card boots fine with all the above mentioned devices plugged in. Is there a way to stop Raspbmc from looking for the root file system on the Hdd?

EDIT
The following is my fstab:
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts rw,nosuid,noexec,relatime,gid=5,mode=62$
/dev/mmcblk0p1 /boot vfat defaults,noatime 0 0
UUID=dfddcb85-dcfb-424b-bced-8ae0b76f12f3 / ext4 defaults,noa$
UUID="8CB4AF12B4AEFE38" / ntfs-3g defaults 0 0

The first uuid (dfdd......) is the usb drive on which raspbmc is installed. The 2nd UUID (8CB.....) is the external HDD. The following settings have been tried for the external HDD:
UUID="8CB4AF12B4AEFE38" / ntfs-3g defaults 0 0
UUID="8CB4AF12B4AEFE38" /dev/sdb ntfs-3g defaults 0 0
UUID="8CB4AF12B4AEFE38" /media/8CB4AF12B4AEFE38 ntfs-3g defaults 0 0

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  • Perhaps your USB HDD is drawing too much power when the kernel is trying to mount. Have you tried booting with the HDD plugged into a powered USB hub?
    – syb0rg
    Aug 11, 2013 at 3:50
  • Yes, the hdd is plugged in to a power hub
    – trinisites
    Aug 12, 2013 at 0:26

1 Answer 1

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Your RPi can't find correct 'boot device' when you plug your USB HDD. You can tell correct boot device name to Raspbmc installation via /etc/fstab file content like this. I'm using BerryBoot with 4 linux distributions installed on USB stick ant is my /etc/fstab content:

proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
UUID=8208bc76-64af-4f8c-8fc0-96aa106f3dc2 / ext4 defaults,noatime 0 0
UUID="8E9420D19420BE19" /media/MAXTOR ntfs-3g defaults 0 0
UUID="D020C19620C183C6" /media/SAMSUNG ntfs-3g defaults 0 0

To find out UUID for devices use 'blkid' command.

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  • i followed you instructions, and added the UUID to fstab, however it did not work. Still getting error "Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: UNable to mount root fs on unknown-block(8,1)" This is my fstab: roc /proc proc defaults 0 0 devpts /dev/pts devpts rw,nosuid,noexec,relatime,gid=5,mode=62$ /dev/mmcblk0p1 /boot vfat defaults,noatime 0 0 UUID=dfddcb85-dcfb-424b-bced-8ae0b76f12f3 / ext4 defaults,noa$ UUID="8CB4AF12B4AEFE38" / ntfs-3g defaults 0 0
    – trinisites
    Aug 15, 2013 at 3:38

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