Raspberry Pi and SD cards went hand in hand until the Pi 5 announced PCIe support that opened doors for many things. The most important addition that every SBC tinkerer was eager for was connecting and booting up via a faster storage option. Direct booting off an NVMe drive is possible because of the combination of the PCIe slot on the Pi and a Pi HAT. After that, it becomes a simple plug-and-play operation, allowing you to ditch the sluggish SD card.
Booting off SSD drives via the USB interface is also a thing, but if you have the newest Raspberry Pi 5, you no longer have to be limited to USB 3.0 speeds. Here are some perks of using an NVMe drive with your Pi compared to all the legacy options available.
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4 Improved read and write speed
No more slowdowns
Using an NVMe drive on a supported Pi model is a no-brainer. You'll notice better read and write speeds with an NVMe drive attached to a Raspberry Pi. Whether it's installing apps, requesting files by using the Pi as a media streaming or file-sharing server, running AI models, or even gaming on the Pi. You won’t notice any huge jump in system boot time, but everything else will be better.
All such operations will deliver the snappiest response compared to an SD card or a USB flash drive. The sheer jump in read and write speeds, which peak around 90-100 MB/s in the best SD cards for Pi to 400+ MB/s (slightly lower write speed), makes it compelling.
By default, Pi 5 permits Gen 2 speeds, but you can bump it up to Gen 3 with some system tweaks and extract the full speed of your Gen 3 NVMe SSD. Although the default Gen 2 speed is sufficient for any operation, you can exceed the default standards.
3 More reliable than an SD Card
No sudden surprises
Ever had an SD card fail on your Pi? It's a common sight while using write-intensive services like Home Assistant, and is a bummer for many. SD cards cannot handle the heavy workload of such services, and as your setup becomes more complex, the SD card fails. NVMe drives offer better reliability because they are built for extensive read-write operations and have better endurance than something as fragile as an SD card.
The NVMe drive can handle constant data logging and other continuous write operations. For example, if you like storing your high-resolution security camera footage on a Pi, there's no reason to use an SD card, even if you store the data elsewhere.
2 Its cost-effective
Scaling up storage isn't a huge expense anymore
An NVMe SSD is surely more expensive than an SD card, right? Well, that's not the case anymore. If you compare the cost of the official Raspberry Pi SSD with an A2 SD card of 512GB capacity, it's not a big difference. Surely you must include the HAT cost that will connect the SSD to the Pi, but that is a one-time investment. The difference in price per GB when comparing an A2 SD card with 512GB storage to an NVMe SSD of the same capacity isn't earth-shattering. For 256GB models, there is a $10 difference, but the benefits outweigh the cost.
Another point to look at is the almost negligible difference between NVMe SSD and SATA SSD prices (256GB, 512GB, and 1TB models). Even if you want to expand the Pi's storage, purchasing a SATA SSD for your Pi 5 will limit it to the USB port speed (USB 3.0), while the PCIe slot on the Pi 5 ensures much faster performance.
For a small bump in the storage price, you get multiple perks such as increased reliability and better performance, all of which improve your Raspberry Pi 5 setup. Until now, the only option to use an NVMe drive with a Raspberry Pi was an NVMe enclosure via the USB port, and that capped the speed, especially if you wanted to use it as a boot drive. Now that the possibility exists, not utilizing it makes little sense.
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1 Cleaner layout
Free up ports
The Raspberry Pi 5’s design moves the SD card slot to the other side, thereby isolating the PCIe slot. You get a dedicated slot to plug in your NVMe drive that doesn't feel cramped. If you use the USB 3.0 port to add a boot drive or other disks, the I/O options can run out fast, and the whole setup feels congested. Using an NVMe ensures that the main storage on your Pi is secure on the board and works faster than anything else (USB 3.0 is slower than PCIe).
You don't need to deal with dangling cables, connecting USB or other NVMe enclosures, and rechecking connections. A single PCIe cable connects the NVMe drive to the Pi, and the HAT secures it in place. You also have several HAT designs to choose from that can ensure good airflow for the Raspberry Pi 5 active cooler. So, you can build a clean Pi setup with the most powerful storage option available now.
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NVMe is a sensible upgrade
Adding an NVMe drive to a Pi isn't a chore, and you can even unlock the Gen 3 speed with a little tinkering. Like the SD card, it has advantages in certain projects that need the fastest and most reliable storage that's less prone to failure. The SD card works fine for small storage capacity projects, but if you need to expand the storage to install more apps, an M.2 NVMe SSD doesn't cost a fortune anymore. So, it's better to switch to NVMe and use the most powerful storage in your Raspberry Pi 5.