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Pushing Raspberry Pi storage to its limit

Rocket Fuel

Article from ADMIN 84/2024

By Federico Lucifredi

We test microSD, USB, and (especially) PCIe storage to push Raspberry Pi storage to the max.

The Raspberry Pi 5 added a new port for a flexible printed cable (FPC) exposing PCI Express (PCIe) for the first time in the history of the beloved single-board computer (SBC; Figure 1). Eclipsed by the convenience of the equally new and faster USB 3.0 ports that now support simultaneous 5Gbps operation and a much improved high-speed microSD card interface, you can understand the Foundation's lack of urgency in delivering an expansion board to add PCIe storage to the lineup. However, the wait is finally over, and you can now assess the full set of new storage options available to Pi users.

M.2 Expansion

With new silicon, last year the Pi 5 delivered close to three times the CPU and GPU performance and twice the memory and I/O bandwidth of its predecessor [1]. The two MIPI (mobile industry processor interface) connectors now support both camera serial (CSI)-2 and display serial interfaces (DSI), making the dedicated screen connector redundant. By retiring the older display port and reusing the freed space, the Pi 5 now sports a small FPC ribbon connector exposing a single-lane PCIe 2.0 bus. NVM Express (NVMe) [2] drives connect to the PCIe bus via an M.2 [3] adapter – in this case, to the new M.2 HAT+ released by Raspberry Pi this spring [4] (Figure 2). The HAT+ standard format enables automatic detection of the board as well as the device connected through the single M Key edge interface it provides. M2 form factors are described by their dimensions, with the M.2 HAT+ supporting 2230 or 2242 modules 30mm and 42mm in length, respectively. The board can supply up to 3A of

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