Boot from NVME SSD for Pi5

Posted under » Raspberry Pi on 29 May 2026

I broke my NVME because I bought a Pi5 without a full casing. The NVME was exposed to the elements and to make a long story short, it broke when something heavy fell on it and I can't revive it. The timing was bad because I did not do the usual backup which I normally do because it was a busy period.

So I bought an Argon V3 case which I highly recommend. I bought v2 for my Pi4 before so I know it is a good solid product. There is an optional NVME slot at the bottom.

It is important that you read the manual! I broke the small plastic ribbon retainer and I didn't realise it came with a spare so I bought another one. The NVME ribbon has a spare too just in case you messed up.

If you don't intend to use SD card at all you should try the new version Argon Neo 5 which is cheaper and with bigger fan.

Initially, I booted from an 128gb micro SD card using Raspberry Pi Imager as usual. I used it for a few days and make some updates and installed my usual stuff. After a while I think an NVME SSD will make things faster and so it is time to migrate the data.

The way the Pi boot is different from Windows or Ubuntu PCs. The key to note is the partition and that do not use GRUB but use MBR. If you have the same partition and contents, then boot is possible. The weird thing is that Pi uses a win boot partition and an ext4 partition for data. You have to follow the exact partition the Raspberry Pi Imager does.

I have success with the DD command. First make an .img from the SD card and then restore it to the NVME. DD will also include the partition table. Target NVME size does not matter as long as it it bigger or same than source. DD works best for a whole disk and not so much for partition only. You can resize the partition later with resize2fs although it is no longer necessary in Pi5 because it will expand the partition automatically.

After losing data, I learnt the hard way a backup strategy is important. My advice is that 1TB is too big for Pi, because it is hard to make a backup later. 128gb img creation takes minutes or hours to complete but it could save you days of suffering in the long run. One drawback of DD is that it will take a long time if the origin NVME is a big disk. 128gb is still big.

To overcome this, I use KDE partition manager which is like gparted. First you resize the data or linux partition to smaller size that does not include empty space. Second, you save the partition table config of the resized diks. Third, backup both windows (boot) and ext4 (data) partition to imgs.

As mentioned earlier, the target disk must be MBR and not GRUB. If you are unsure, use pi imager to create the disk. Restore the partition from source or origin to target. You will notice all data on target will be lost. You then restore the data of BOTH boot and data from the imgs made earlier.

If you use Argon case then it is all well and good but if you choose to use a USB-C external SSD, then you need to make sure it doesn't sleep. To keep it awake, you can use cron like so

*/5 * * * * touch /home/ubuntu/.stayawake

Another drawback in using external SSD using USB, you cannot plug in or plug out another USB device because it will kill the power of the SSD and you have to reboot. In summary, pcie NVME is the way to go and will not go back to SD. Last but not least, use a good NVME. I bought a LEXAR and for some reason, it is not reliable and often have data loss which also lead to system failure (hang) and need to reboot. I replaced it with a cheaper Fanxiang and has no problems so far.