The new single-board computer Raspberry Pi 5 does not natively support M.2 format SSDs.
But startup Pineberry Pi has developed an expansion board, called HatDrive, that allows you to retrofit an M.2 SSD.
The Raspberry Pi Foundation has only announced such a solution for next year’s Raspberry Pi 5, but Pineberry Pi boards are already available.
Can be mounted on top of Raspberry Pi 5HatDrive TopThe price is 20 euros + shipping.Although it offers an M.2 slot, it only supports the short formats M.2 2230 and M.2 2242.
In addition to the above formats, a little more expensive at around 26 eurosunder the motherboardHatDrive Bottom also fits the commonly used 8 cm length M.2 2280 SSD.
PCIe/NVMe only with handbrake
However, the adapter board only supports NVMe SSDs with M keys, not SATA models.
Connections are limited to less than 1 GB/s (gross) with PCIe 3.0 x1, so the maximum performance of the SSD is hardly available.
However, on the Raspberry Pi 5 side, the connection (via the FPC connector) is even slower, as this type of adapter only offers 0.5 GB/s (500 MB/s) of PCIe 2.0 x1.
Mirosław Folejewski, one of the two founders of Pineberry Pi, demonstrated on X (formerly Twitter) how to put a smaller version on a Raspberry Pi 5 and connect it to a 40-pin socket with a short cable. Masu.
The adapter board measures 65 x 56.5 mm, which corresponds to the official Raspberry Pi HAT dimensions.
The larger model at the bottom measures 90 x 56 mm, so it’s too large to fit into the official Raspberry Pi 5 housing.
Tom’s HardwareAs reported bythe Raspberry Pi Foundation is planning two formats for the official Raspberry Pi M.2 HAT.
Source: CompuBase – HatDrive: M.2-SSDs beim Raspberry Pi 5 nachrüsten
Explanation:
Raspberry Pi5 has not yet been sold in Japan as it has not passed technical compliance certification, but it seems that an M.2 adapter (so-called HatDrive) is already on sale globally.
As mentioned in the original article, Raspberry Pi5 comes with a PCIe interface, which allows you to use commercially available M.2.
However, the link speed is PCIe2.0x1, so it is 550MB/s, which is almost the same speed as SATA.
It’s only a little faster than USB 3.0, but I think it’s a big move that you can now use a general M.2 SSD for storage.
Does RaspberryPi need to be this high-performance for its intended use? However, considering that it is gradually becoming closer to the PC, shouldn’t it be welcomed as normal?
I think it can be said that the Raspberry Pi 5 has performance closer to that of a PC compared to the Raspberry Pi 4.
There was a kit available that uses the Pi4 as a NAS, but I think a more enhanced NAS kit for the Pi5 will be released.
The N100 also has enough performance to be used as a normal PC, but the Raspberry Pi5 has about 2/3 the performance of the N100 when compared with Geekbench 5/6, so it has much higher performance than GeminiLake/Reflesh.
Therefore, you can install Linux and use it comfortably as a normal ultra-small desktop.
