Moving USB Boot Drive (RasPi OS) from Raspberry Pi 4 to Pi 5

[Swamp Thing]

If I just take the USB boot drive (Raspberry Pi OS) from a Pi 4 and plug it into a new Pi 5, will it work seamlessly just as before? Will it work at all? Or, is there a risk that it will become unusable on the original Pi 4 board?

... Given that it has been in use for a year and has lots of packages and upgrades installed on it?

 

[Vanadium 50]

It will probably be fine. If it were me, I'd make a backup first, though.

 

[FactChecker]

It will probably be fine. If it were me, I'd make a backup first, though.

For an OS drive, "backup" means image clone.
The personal data of yours should be usable, but the OS and drivers are probably not directly usable.

 

[Vanadium 50]

Same processor, same architecture, same installer image - while it is not guaranteed to work, the odds don;t get much better. And yes, a backup means an image.

 

[FactChecker]

Same processor, same architecture, same installer image

I stand corrected. I didn't realize that 4 and 5 were so similar.

 

[Vanadium 50]

They have different SOCs, but they are still ARM cores.

 

[Swamp Thing]

Just learned that support for Raspberry 5 begins with the OS version based on Debian Bookworm.

If I try to boot from an old OS version, it says Raspberry Pi 5 is not supported on the installed OS, giving me an option to try anyway by setting an override flag. I decided not to try that, so I downloaded the latest OS for my Pi-5.

 

[FactChecker]

Just learned that support for Raspberry 5 begins with the OS version based on Debian Bookworm.

If I try to boot from an old OS version, it says Raspberry Pi 5 is not supported on the installed OS, giving me an option to try anyway by setting an override flag. I decided not to try that, so I downloaded the latest OS for my Pi-5.

Thanks for the update. That is a wise move and definitely the safest.