LOL - I agree - all issue is gone; like I stated earlier - just zapped the "odd-ball" SDCard -- maybe coming from AWS something happened to it in transit - who can say.? But in the end it's working.? Just gonna chock?it up to "random event" and leave it at that.
And yes HamPi on boot does indeed do a 'resize' -- so big THANKS to author (sorry forgot callsign/name).