Base Duo compatibility with 2TB NVME drives

Discussion Raspberry Pi
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I’m looking for information on what kind of 2TB NVME drives others had success with in combination with the Base Duo. I understand that if it worked for some people, there’s no guarantee that it will also work for me, but it would be a starting point.

Pimoroni itself could chime in as they sell kits with included 2TB drives, so surely they have some info on what would likely work. Again I’m not looking for guarantees, just indicators.

I’ve read some people saying that if you want to operate two large drives (2TB, 4TB), there is not enough power and you need to solder some extra power to it. Is that really true? If so, where can I connect the extra power to? Pimoroni please comment on this.

Thank you.

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You can check https://pibenchmarks.com/user/pimoroni/ if you find a suitable NVMe that worked for someone.

Regarding power: in operation, the SSDs don’t use much since there is only a single PCIe line that the SSD controller has to service. And in case of the Base Duo it is even shared. During power on, things could be different. You can expect a short current spike when you turn on the Pi5 plus both SSDs. This might be a problem for the SSD if it cannot power up fast enough. Adding a dedicated power supply will solve this problem. But there is no way to know about that in advance.

1 Like
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@bablokb Thank you for your response!

Unfortunately the Pimoroni Pi benchmarks as well as the Base Duo’s compatibility page list a single type of 2TB drive as compatible, which is the Kioxia EXCERIAG2SSD. I’ve never in my life heard of Kioxia, so I’d rather go with well known manufacturers such as Samsung, WD, Kingston, etc.

I’m hoping users will share here what has worked for them.

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Don’t worry about Kioxia, that is a spin-off from Toshiba. Anyhow, these compatibility tests/lists don’t mean much today, since SSD companies tend to change the internals (including the controller) without changing the model-name and/or model-number.

Unless you already own a Pi5 and the Base Duo, have you thought about an alternative system for your storage? 4TB is a lot and if you need that much “hot” storage, a N100/N150 based system will most certainly be the better choice. And if you look at prices, there are hardly relevant differences (the SSDs are the most expensive parts).

If you don’t need hot storage (i.e. constant online random access to the whole SSD), other storage solutions (even HDD) work as well for the Pi5.

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@bablokb Thank you again for your thoughts.

The reason why I insist on using large SSDs with the RPI 5 have multiple layers:

  1. I’m a RPI fan/fanatic since 2011, I’ve owned all generations of the Pi and at least 15 pieces along the years.
  2. I like Linux
  3. Love the low power usage and no noise
  4. I already have a RPI 5 NAS configured, I just want to eliminate all USB connected drives, to make the setup neat, don’t like all those cables. My NAS needs to be a decorative piece on my desk, not a mess of entangled cables :)
  5. I don’t like HDDs, they are failure prone and slow
  6. I need multiple computers to be able to access large amounts of data over the LAN
  7. Etc, etc :)

So it is decided, it will be the Base Duo with two 2TB SSDs now, possibly extending to 2x4TB in the next years if SSDs become cheaper (although nothing ever gets cheaper in these last few years)