WavesharePCIe 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

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 layoutHonestly, 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.