Booting from a RAID1 volume on Pi Zero 2? - eviltoast

Hi, question for the group.

I have a pi zero 2 running the lite OS suggested by the imager. I’ve been able to create a RAID with 2 240gb SSD on the usb port. Even during a peak read/write stress test, the power draw for the whole system doesn’t exceed 800ma.

Anyhow, ideally I would like to boot from this volume and elimante the SD card completely, but have been stopped by not even being able to boot with the root set to the RAID and the boot dir still on an SD. I can get it to boot when /usr and / var are on the raid

Has anyone any insights on different things to try? Perhaps even a good reason this can’t work would free me from this fools quest so my project can advance?