So I finally managed to get my hands on a Raspberry Pi 5, and I’ve been tinkering a bit. Out of the box, running on an SD card, it’s much faster than the 4 (granted, I’ve only had a Pi400, not a vanilla Pi 4). I then decided to try an external USB m.2 drive enclosure to see if the speeds increased, and they did – exponentially. Now addicted to the quest for more speed, I’ve also acquired an m.2 PCIE hat that accepts a full sized m.2 drive and this thing is just flying.
I didn’t run any tests while using the SD card, but I did run a test to compare the USB 3.0 drive enclosure vs. the direct-attached m.2 PCIE hat to show just how massive the difference is. I highly encourage anyone using USB to upgrade to the m.2 hat when/if you can, if you’re looking for an extra speed bump. It really makes using the Pi5 that much better. (Amazon Canada Links Below)
USB 3.0 m.2 enclosure:
Sequential write speed 34479 KB/sec (target 10000) – PASS
Random write speed 4541 IOPS (target 500) – PASS
Random read speed 3471 IOPS (target 1500) – PASS
m.2 PCIE Hat:
Sequential write speed 405168 KB/sec (target 10000) – PASS
Random write speed 92434 IOPS (target 500) – PASS
Random read speed 109591 IOPS (target 1500) – PASS
Amazon Canada Links:
USB Enclosure: UGreen USB 3.2 Gen 2 M.2 NVMe Enclosure
M.2 Enclosure: GeeekPi N04 M.2 NVMe SSD PCIe Peripheral Board