Waveshare PCIe to 2-CH M.2 HAT+ Adapter Type B Compatible with Raspberry Pi 5, Support 2280/2260 / 2242/2230 Size NVMe Protocol M.2 SS Solid State Drive High-Speed Reading/Writing NVMe HAT

I picked up the Waveshare PCIe to 2-CH M.2 HAT+ (Type B) for Raspberry Pi 5 to expand storage options, and it’s been a great add-on. The board feels well-made, fits the Pi 5 neatly, and the overall setup looks clean and purposeful once installed. Installation was straightforward as long as you take your time with alignment and mounting. Once fitted, it’s a really convenient way to run M.2 storage on the Pi 5 and makes the whole system feel more “proper” for projects where you want fast, reliable storage compared to microSD. The dual M.2 support is also a big plus for flexibility (storage expansion, separating OS and data, etc., depending on your configuration). A couple of practical notes: make sure you’ve got adequate cooling and case clearance, since adding a HAT can change airflow and height. Also double-check you’re using compatible M.2 drives and the correct configuration for your use case. Overall, this is a solid, well-designed PCIe/M.2 solution for the Raspberry Pi 5—great for anyone building a more serious Pi setup.

Works very well. Great wat to turn your Raspberry pi into a mini Homelab server.

Fairly easy to add to raspi5. Worked first time I powered up without fiddling withe cable as I had to on some other hats. Now have two nvme drives working. Took a while to configure as I am no expert on the linux filesystem but there is plenty of info online

I picked up the Waveshare PCIe to 2-CH M.2 HAT+ for the Raspberry Pi 5 back in September 2024 and it’s been running flawlessly ever since. From the moment I got it, I threw everything at it — SSDs of all sizes, OS installation quirks, boot tests, and performance benchmarks. If you’re looking to turn your Pi into something far beyond a hobby board, this is the adapter that unlocks it. Let’s start with setup. The physical installation is smooth — it comes with all the screws, jumpers, and bits you need. The 16-pin ribbon cable feels sturdy enough, though I’d love an extra centimetre or two for easier handling in tight cases. That said, with a bit of patience and a spudger, no issues there. Now, to the real tech bit. I tested it with several NVMe drives: a 512GB Kingston, a 2TB Crucial P3, and a chunky 4TB WD SN850X. Here's the key thing to know: the Raspberry Pi Imager will only let you write the OS image to up to 2TB directly. So initially, I worked around this by flashing to a 2TB partition and using the rest as a separate data partition — totally fine and worked well. BUT — there’s a method to use the entire 4TB as one usable volume with the OS: You can flash the image to the 4TB disk as usual, then use gparted or command-line tools like parted and resize2fs to expand the root partition to the full 4TB after the first boot. Alternatively, during imaging, you can manually partition the disk, install the root filesystem where you want it, and edit cmdline.txt and fstab to point to the correct partitions. It takes a bit of Linux knowledge but works great. Booting from the NVMe? Once you update the Pi 5 bootloader (via rpi-eeprom-update and config settings), you can boot directly off NVMe. I used Raspberry Pi OS 64-bit and Ubuntu Server 22.04 LTS — both booted without issue. Benchmarking showed consistent 460–480 MB/s reads and around 420 MB/s writes — huge improvement over microSD. I stress-tested it by running local MariaDB, container workloads via Docker, and used it as a NAS target — no hiccups. It’s rock solid. Also tested the dual PCIe capability by combining a 2TB SSD and a Hailo-8 AI accelerator — worked straight away. The power management chip and dual LED indicators are a nice touch for real-time activity and health checks. Summary: ✔ Handles all common NVMe sizes (2230–2280) ✔ Perfect for 4TB drives if you know the partitioning trick ✔ Full NVMe boot works beautifully after config ✔ Stable performance under 24/7 workloads ✔ Works well with dual devices (SSD + AI module or dual SSDs) ✔ Smooth physical build, includes all mounting gear ✔ Advanced users can fully customise boot and partition layout Honestly, this adapter turns the Pi 5 into a serious little machine. No crashes, no heat issues (with a basic fan), and no limitations as long as you’re comfortable editing config files or expanding partitions post-install. It’s handled everything I’ve asked of it and hasn't blinked once since day one. Highly recommended for tinkerers, developers, homelabbers, and Pi power users. If you're planning to make your Pi pull serious weight, this is the tool to make it happen.

This PCIe two channel M.2 Pi HAT works very well with the RPi 5. It is relatively easy to install even without instructions. It came with all the screws and standoffs needed to mount the device to a RPi 5, including small knurled thumbscrews to hold the NVME drives in place. You do have to be careful when aligning the GPIO pins to the connector on the HAT, but that is true of any HAT you are installing on a Raspberry Pi. Once I figured out a mistake I had made orienting the small PCIe interface cable it came online and I was able to install the two NVME drives I had purchased for my NAS project. This HAT is compatible with the OpenMediaVault NAS software I am using, although that is not a surprise. It should be compatible with almost any software or operating system given that it comes online so easily. The price point is good, too. Overall I am pleased with this purchase.

If you need two NVME drives, this board works very well. I installed 2 nvme's and tested both for speed, here are the results using "dd" command. #"-NVME0 Write Test." #> dd if=/dev/zero of=/home/pinox/xnvme0/xtst bs=500M count=1 oflag=sync 1+0 records in 1+0 records out 524288000 bytes (524 MB, 500 MiB) copied, 2.15291 s, 244 MB/s #"-NVME0 Read Test." #> dd if=/home/pinox/xnvme0/xtst of=/dev/null bs=500M count=1 oflag=sync 1+0 records in 1+0 records out 524288000 bytes (524 MB, 500 MiB) copied, 0.339717 s, 1.5 GB/s . #"-NVME1 Write Test." #> dd if=/dev/zero of=/home/pinox/xnvme1/xtst bs=500M count=1 oflag=sync 1+0 records in 1+0 records out 524288000 bytes (524 MB, 500 MiB) copied, 2.16044 s, 243 MB/s #"-NVME1 Read Test." #> dd if=/home/pinox/xnvme1/xtst of=/dev/null bs=500M count=1 oflag=sync 1+0 records in 1+0 records out 524288000 bytes (524 MB, 500 MiB) copied, 0.414051 s, 1.3 GB/s #"-Copy NVME0 to NVME1 Test." #> dd if=/home/pinox/xnvme0/xtst of=/home/pinox/xnvme1/xtst0to0 bs=500M count=1 oflag=sync 1+0 records in 1+0 records out 524288000 bytes (524 MB, 500 MiB) copied, 2.19423 s, 239 MB/s I hope this helps you in deciding if you want to buy this board.

Le montage est fait, reste à tester le tout

Questa scheda di espansione per RPi 5 è stata un vero game changer per i miei progetti! L’installazione è stata semplice e immediata, e la compatibilità con il Raspberry Pi 5 è perfetta: nessun problema di riconoscimento, nessun glitch, tutto ha funzionato al primo colpo. Il vero punto forte, però, è la possibilità di installare due moduli di memoria contemporaneamente, con supporto fino a 4 TB per modulo. Una capacità enorme, ideale per progetti che richiedono tanto spazio, come media server, backup locali o applicazioni IoT avanzate. La scheda è anche ben costruita, stabile e affidabile, con un’ottima gestione delle connessioni e delle temperature. Finora non ho riscontrato nessun rallentamento o problema di stabilità.

Problemlose Installation. Benötigt auf jedenfalls das 27 Watt Netzteil.