#More than 1 boot.elf update

The monitor showed a text console telling me that it could not find 'recovery.elf' and that 'start.elf' is not compatible, and I should download the latest from a URL. I shut down the Pi, turned off the power, and removed the SD card. I copied all of the files from the current '/boot' to the HD's boot partition (/dev/sda1), then edited the 'etc/fstab' on /dev/sda5 to mount /dev/sda1 for '/boot' instead of the SD card partition. I connected the USB drive all of the partitions of note on the HD auto-mounted under '/media/daniel' (substitute your own username for 'daniel'). I disconnected the external HD and booted off the 32 gig SD card I had originally installed Raspbian on and ran the same steps again.ДЄfter reboot, the 'vcgencmd' reported the expected May 15th date.

#More than 1 boot.elf update

I followed the directions for from the article, doing the 'apt' update and full-upgrade, editing the file '/etc/defaults/rpi-eeprom-update' and performing the 'rpi-eeprom-update' followed by a reboot.ДЄfter the update, I checked the firmware with 'vcgencmd bootloader_version', but it reported the old firmware. The following are the steps I then followed: '/boot' was still mounted from the SD card in '/etc/fstab', but everything else was mounted from the external hard drive. It's much faster, and more spacious, than the SD card. I have been booting off of an SD card with my root file system on the external drive for months now with no problems. dev/sda8 ext4 (502.0 GiB) 'future' (not mounted)Note that this does not follow the SD card partitioning (at least for the 'Noobs' image) which appears to have 'Recovery' as the primary partition, and in the extended partition, a partitions for '/boot', a 'Settings' partition that doesn't seem to get mounted, and the root partition. In my case, I had partitioned the external drive (a 1TB Seagate 'Backup Plus Portable' USB 3.0) as follows:

I have successfully done the firmware upgrade without messing up my USB external drive contents or configuration. : I am not an authority on this, but my answer is a qualified 'yes'.