It's now easier than ever (and very affordable) to use a fast SSD with a Raspberry Pi 5, perfect if you're going to try Windows 11 on it

The official Raspberry Pi SSD.

What you need to know

• The Raspberry Pi Foundation has announced a new official storage product for the Raspberry Pi 5.
• The new NVMe SSD comes in 256GB and 512GB capacities, though the larger won't be available until November.
• Prices start at $30 for the smaller SSD on its own, but also comes in a bundle with the m.2 Hat+ which is required to attach the drive to the Raspberry Pi.

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The traditional way of running software from a Raspberry Pi has always been using microSD cards. But even the fastest of these are limited compared to even slower SSDs, but that doesn't have to be a problem anymore.

The Raspberry Pi Foundation now has its own officially branded and supported SSDs for the Raspberry Pi 5. Starting at $30 for 256GB, these NVMe drives are based on the older PCIe 3 spec, but compared to any microSD card will feel like they're on a different planet.

This isn't the first SSD that anyone will have used on the Raspberry Pi 5, it was one of the first things folks thought of using with the PCIe port on the newest version of the tiny computer. From the Raspberry Pi blog:

"But the most popular use case for the PCI Express port on Raspberry Pi 5 is to attach an NVMe solid-state disk (SSD). SSDs are fast; faster even than our branded A2-class SD cards. If no-compromises performance is your goal, you’ll want to run Raspberry Pi OS from an SSD, and Raspberry Pi SSDs are the perfect choice."

It's not a simple case of plug and play, you also need the m.2 Hat+ to attach the drive to the Raspberry Pi 5. The good news is that you can buy a bundle for an extra $10 on top of either of the two drives that includes this, so you're good to go. Our pals at Tom's Hardware have a full review of the Raspberry Pi m.2 Hat+ to show you what you can expect to get.

There will be a 512GB version sold from November that will cost $45, and as you'd expect, these are reasonably priced. The smaller m.2 2230 form SSDs that these are, aren't that common, especially in PCIe 3 trim. They're more often seen as PCIe 4.0 upgrades to handhelds like the Steam Deck and ROG Ally lately.

There it is, in all its glory. (Image credit: Raspberry Pi)

Using an SSD is particularly important if you're actually trying to use the Raspberry Pi 5 as any form of desktop computer. The natural application is Linux, but you can, with patience, get the ARM64 version of Windows 11 running on one of these. Our pals over at Tom's Hardware have tried this, albeit several months ago, so the process could be better now. But it's still possible, and you're certainly going to benefit running any desktop OS from one of these over a USB drive or a microSD card.

The 256GB Raspberry Pi SSD is now available to buy from authorised resellers such as CanaKit in the U.S. with prices from $30.

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