Marc's Blog: linux - Using Raspberry Pi5 as a Server With Raid1, Btrfs, and Multiple NVME M2 or Sata Drives

I was looking at replacing some ancient servers with lower power rPi5s after figuring out that they could finally work with proper NVME andSata drives so you can have a real server setup on reliable storage, including raid1, btrfs backups and all that good stuff.

what a Pi5 looks like

>>> Go Here for How to Setup Serial Boot And All The Config Files <<<

This is what I found with some research:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B5RJHYFD or https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D8BCWHPT are M2 M key SATA cards. They're really cool, you get 6 SATA slots from a single M2 slot (without power, though). But make sure you buy the class (M version), not B+M (2 notches). As I found out the hard way, B+M M2 does plug into M key slots, but are really only compatible with B key slots (details explained here: https://www.partitionwizard.com/partitionmanager/m2-m-vs-bm.html )

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D9D2W8MF very cool 4x M2 M-key slot expansion board, compatible with the M2 NGFF Sata Cards mentioned above. The one thing to note is that it does not provide 5V power anywhere, which is unfortunate if you want to then plug SATA drives (flash 2.5" sata recommended for power reasons).

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D3LP9KBH is a more compact 2 M2 NVME expansion board. It also could support SATA drives if you use the Sata M-key PMP mentioned above

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DQV74TDJ GeeekPi S021 SATA 3.0x2 for Raspberry Pi 5, with Active Cooler and 12V 6A Power Supply is probably the best if you only need to plug 1 or 2 SATA drives that require actual power. This board does provide power for actual spinning rust drives should you want that.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D2VTL9G5 GeeekPi Dual FPC PCIe HAT for Raspberry Pi 5, B12 HAT 1 to 2 PCIe Interface allows you to use 2 of the boards above should you wish although routing cables is going to be a bit rough

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D5CRSC64 GeeekPi Quad FPC PCIe HAT for Raspberry Pi 5, B14 HAT 1 to 4 PCIe Interface is the same but with 4 outputs. The seller shows how to use this for single NVME boards, and honestly you probably don't want to do this when you can buy the dual or quad NVME board all in one.

While the PCIe expander cards are cool, and I have successfully managed to make a quad NVME board work at the same time as the SATA board listed below, in real life you'd likely want to use the dual or quad NVME board and find 5V power for your SATA drive. This is fine as long as you have a lower power drive (laptop flash) as you can steal 5V from the GPIO pins, but if you need more amps for a real drive or multiple flash sata drives, then you want to look into a real external 5V power supply like the one provided in the GeeekPi S021 SATA 3.0x2 for Raspberry Pi 5, with Active Cooler and 12V 6A Power Supply mentioned above.

Realistically you may also be perfectly happy with a USB 3 to 2.5" SATA adapter since it can still give you 3GB/s for flash drives

This is what it looks like:

you can easily have 24 sata drives with the 4X NVME board and 6 sata port NVME M2 cards

yes, I got excited when I got both SATA and NVME on a Raspberry Pi 5 ;)

this PCIe doubler can be used to chain other cards (not needed for me)

if you want, you can use the dedicated SATA card plugged directly into the Pi or PCIe doubler

be careful not to get a SATA PMP M2 (B+M with too notches) as those won't work. The other is a PCI sata card

when using M2 Sata cards, you can steal 5V power from GPIO

For my 2nd server, I just used a dual NVME HAT and SATA card with 6 ports

different vendors of SATA cards of either 5 or 6 ports

the PCIe 2 or 4 port expanders allow lots of stacking, but the example they give with single NVME M2 adapters, are useless since I bought a 4 slot NVME HAT

>>> Go Here for How to Setup Serial Boot And All The Config Files <<<

You can also see that video on how to turn a Pi5 into a high performance NAS:

Marc's Public Blog - Linux Hacking