Raspberry Pi introduced its first SSDs

Raspberry Pi has announced new accessories for its flagship single-board computer Raspberry Pi 5 – M.2 SSDs under its own brand, available in 256 and 512 GB capacities. New items are supplied complete with everything necessary to connect to the system.

Image source: raspberrypi.com

In addition to the SSD itself, the kit includes a Raspberry Pi M.2 HAT+ (Hardware Attached on Top) module with an M.2 slot, which offers a PCIe 3.0 interface and supports drives of the M.2 2230 form factor. A kit with a 256 GB NVMe SSD will cost $40, and for 512 GB – $55. The drives themselves without connection modules are sold for $10 cheaper; At the same time, the 256 GB version is available for sale now, and the version with 512 GB of space can still be pre-ordered, but it will be available only in November.

It is noteworthy that Raspberry Pi previously stated that the single-board computer only supported PCIe 2.0, but in the raspi-config settings you can set support for PCIe 3.0 – compatible drives, as practice has shown, are indeed supported and speed up the operation of the device. The 256GB SSD offers a claimed performance of 40,000 input/output operations per second (IOPS) for random reads of 4KB blocks and 70,000 for random writes; for the 512 GB model this is 50,000 and 90,000 IOPS, respectively.

The manufacturer of the 512 GB drive is Biwin Storage Technology Co. Ltd – OEM supplier for HP and Acer; on the 256 GB version there is no such marking, but it is possible that the manufacturer is the same.