Orange Pi 5 NVMe/SATA SSD Boot Guide

Orange Pi 5 with Heat Sinks
Orange Pi 5 NVMe / SSD Boot Guide

The Orange Pi 5 has a nice M.2 NVMe slot but unfortunately most of the official images will not boot if you try to directly image a NVMe drive. Fortunately there is an easy way to get this working that people who frequent the blog will almost certainly have seen before.

We are going to bootstrap the boot process using a SD card and then clone that SD card to our SSD to be used as the root partition. This essentially will let us have our system’s root partition on the SSD (much faster).

Let’s get started!

Hardware Used

Orange Pi 5 - Top View
Orange Pi 5

The Orange Pi 5 the latest release from Orange Pi and is the most powerful model yet. It has a 6 core CPU and options from 4GB of RAM all the way up to 32GB of RAM!

Links: Amazon.com*, AliExpress*, Amazon.ca*, Amazon.co.uk*, Amazon.de*, Amazon.es*, Amazon.fr*, Amazon.it*, Amazon.nl*, Amazon.pl*

Kioxia 2230 M2 NVMe Drive
Kioxia 2230 M2 NVMe Drive

The Kioxia (Toshiba) 128GB M.2 2230 PCIe NVMe drive is much shorter than most NVMe drives (full size is 2280). It fits great with single board computers / tablets / other smaller form factors.

Links: Amazon.com*, Amazon.ca*, Amazon.co.uk*, Amazon.co.jp*, Amazon.com.au*, Amazon.de*, Amazon.es*, Amazon.fr*, Amazon.it*, Amazon.nl*, Amazon.pl*, Amazon.se*, Amazon.sg*

Geekworm Copper Heat Sink Set
Geekworm Copper Heat Sink Set

The Geekworm copper heat sink set is designed to fit many different single board computers. It uses thermal conductive adhesive which many “cheap” heat sink kits for SBCs don’t have. Eliminates hot spots and reduces throttling. Can be further enhanced by powered cooling over the heat sinks.

Links: Amazon.com*, Amazon.ca*, Amazon.co.jp*, Amazon.co.uk*, Amazon.de*, Amazon.es*, Amazon.fr*, Amazon.it*

StarTech 2.5" SATA Adapter
StarTech 2.5″ SATA Adapter

The StarTech USB 3.1 to 2.5″ SATA adapter is one I have recommended for many years for use with all kinds of devices including the Raspberry Pi, Orange Pi, ODROID, Libre “Renegade” and Tinker Board. It’s widely compatible and works with gaming consoles as well.

Links: Amazon.com*, Amazon.ca*, Amazon.com.au*, Amazon.co.jp*, Amazon.co.uk*, Amazon.de*, Amazon.es*, Amazon.fr*, Amazon.it*, Amazon.nl*, Amazon.pl*, Amazon.se*, Amazon.sg*

Orange Pi Wireless Mouse
Orange Pi Wireless Mouse

The Orange Pi official mouse uses 2.4GHz wireless to give you a wireless mouse experience with the Orange Pi

Links: Amazon.com*, AliExpress*

Orange Pi Portable Monitor
Orange Pi Portable Monitor

The Orange Pi monitor is meant to be a portable monitor you can take anywhere. It has a resolution of 1080P and features a hinge in the back that folds out to support the monitor.

Links: Amazon.com*, AliExpress*

Note for USB Booting

Important: Only the top blue port of the Orange Pi 5 is fast for using USB storage. You can use a USB-connected SSD.

The bottom port, despite being blue, is USB 2.1.

Keep in mind that if you are using a USB SSD then in the instructions anywhere it says /dev/nvme0n1 you will need to use /dev/sda or whatever drive was assigned when you plug in your drive via USB.

Note for Official Debian / Ubuntu Images (Updated 1/10/2023)

Orange Pi has updated their official images to support directly booting from NVMe. This means that if you are using the official Ubuntu or Debian from orangepi.org then you can actually write the image directly to the SSD. This is the easiest way to get it going.

You first need to write the image to a SD card and then run:

sudo orangepi-config

Then choose System->Install->Boot from SPI and install the new updated boot loader to the SPI flash.

This did not work at launch but is working now. It is now possible to simply write the official images directly to NVMe and boot with it after updating the boot loader! The following instructions will still be useful for other operating systems or operating systems that do not support booting directly from NVMe.

Note for Armbian (Added 1/20/2023)

Armbian has a similar install utility as orangepi-config. For Armbian you will use:

sudo armbian-config

Then choose System->Install->Boot from eMMC and install the new updated boot loader to the SPI flash.

You should also install the system to Armbian using this method. The instructions in the rest of the article are meant for operating systems that will not boot natively from NVMe. It uses a SD card as the boot loader to essentially let you boot anything (even ones not designed to boot directly from NVMe).

Supported SSD Sizes (Updated 1/26/2023)

Important: There is also a type of M.2 drive called a M.2 SATA drive. This is an older type of drive that most of you won’t have but some of you will. This type of drive is supported by the Orange Pi 5 but you have to add a special overlay (overlays=ssd-sata). If your NVMe drive shows up as /dev/sda instead of /dev/nvme0n1 then you have a M.2 SATA SSD. If you have a M.2 SATA drive follow this excellent guide by u/jng98908 on reddit.

You can use either a 2230 or a 2242 size NVMe drive.

There are actually holes for mounting hardware at both places.

Using a 2230 size NVMe drive looks like this:

Orange Pi 5 with 2230 NVMe drive mounted
Orange Pi 5 with 2230 NVMe drive mounted

It’s totally fine to use a larger one but they will be hanging off the edge of the board. As you can see I do not have the mounts installed on my board. I just leave the 2230 drive in the port like this but it is on my to-do list to find some mounts for the M.2 drive for this board.

SD card boot loader – Preparing SD Card

First you should have a completely working installation on a SD card of the OS that you would like to use. I used the official Debian desktop image for this guide (recommended) so if your partitions are different it may be your flavor of Linux and need slightly altered instructions.

If you have an already working installation you want to move to your SSD you can use this as well most likely.

Note that some operating systems like Armbian will require you to manually go in and modify files on the “boot” partition. If you stick with the official images you should be able to follow the guide as-is but note that some operating systems may have text files (or even files that need to be recompiled with mkimage like for Armbian) for this method to work.

You should completely update first with:

sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade

Preparing SSD

First we are going to completely remove all partitions from the drive so it’s completely blank. Your drive should typically be /dev/nvme0n1:

sudo gdisk /dev/nvme0n1

Now remove all partitions from the device. If you press “p” it will print out the partitions. You can then use “d” to delete them.

Here’s an example on mine:

root@orangepi5:~# sudo gdisk
GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 1.0.6

Partition table scan:
  MBR: protective
  BSD: not present
  APM: not present
  GPT: present

Found valid GPT with protective MBR; using GPT.

Command (? for help): p
Disk /dev/nvme0n1: 250069680 sectors, 119.2 GiB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512/512 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): E3017ECA-4571-4F62-A39F-4BA2A4323BD8
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
Main partition table begins at sector 2 and ends at sector 33
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 250069646
Partitions will be aligned on 64-sector boundaries
Total free space is 8350 sectors (4.1 MiB)

Number  Start (sector)    End (sector)  Size       Code  Name
   1              64            8063   3.9 MiB     0700  loader1
   2           16384           24575   4.0 MiB     0700  loader2
   3           24576           32767   4.0 MiB     0700  trust
   4           32768         1081343   512.0 MiB   EF00  boot
   5         1081344       250069646   118.7 GiB   8300  rootfs

Command (? for help): d

Keep pressing d until all the partitions are deleted. Once they are gone use the ‘w’ command to write your changes.

Cloning Installation to SSD

We’re now ready to clone your installation to the SSD. We can now copy your drive to the SSD with the following command:

cat /dev/mmcblk1 > /dev/nvme0n1

Wait for the operation to complete (there won’t be any output but you will have a cursor again and be able to type new commands). Remember that you are copying an entire drive from one to another basically with that one command.

Mine took about 30-45 minutes (although I was using a 64GB SD card and the larger SD card you use the longer it will take to copy the whole drive).

If you are having any trouble with permissions try becoming “root” first with:

sudo su

Now try running the command again and as the superuser you should not encounter any permission errors.

Change SD card’s rootfs UUID

We need to change our SD card’s UUID so that it doesn’t try to boot from that partition. We can set it to a random one with the following command:

sudo tune2fs -U random /dev/mmcblk1p2

If you get an error with the previous command regarding csums try the following command instead:

sudo tune2fs -O metadata_csum_seed -U random /dev/mmcblk1p2

We can verify that it has changed with blkid like this:

root@orangepi5:~# sudo blkid
/dev/nvme0n1p1: SEC_TYPE="msdos" LABEL_FATBOOT="opi_boot" LABEL="opi_boot" UUID="0257-2A31" BLOCK_SIZE="512" TYPE="vfat" PARTLABEL="bootfs" PARTUUID="0a65713b-d4b4-0642-a3a4-ebc357e507a1"
/dev/nvme0n1p2: LABEL="opi_root" UUID="ae948e48-3646-4f5c-be01-73168e079bc8" BLOCK_SIZE="4096" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="7490e84a-f585-944e-9ce6-f275f067a023"
/dev/mmcblk1p1: SEC_TYPE="msdos" LABEL_FATBOOT="opi_boot" LABEL="opi_boot" UUID="0257-2A31" BLOCK_SIZE="512" TYPE="vfat" PARTLABEL="bootfs" PARTUUID="0a65713b-d4b4-0642-a3a4-ebc357e507a1"
/dev/mmcblk1p2: LABEL="opi_root" UUID="37a6ee0a-e61d-470a-9e53-eaf51726942c" BLOCK_SIZE="4096" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="4f32d51c-0523-1248-9bc3-092d1f11c594"

Notice that /dev/nvme0n1p2 and /dev/mmcblk1p2 no longer have matching UUIDs. This is exactly what we want.

Change SSD’s boot UUID

Next we are going to change the boot partition’s UUID on the SSD. This will make it so that the mounted /boot folder inside your operating system actually mounts the SD card (which is your actual boot loader in this configuration).

First make sure you have mtools with:

sudo apt install mtools -y

Now we can change the UUID with:

sudo mlabel -N aaaa1111 -i /dev/nvme0n1p1 ::

You can verify these are different using the same sudo blkid command as the previous section.

Run fsck

Before we reboot run fsck on the drive like this:

sudo fsck -yf /dev/nvme0n1p2

This will prevent you from having to run fsck on the CLI the first time you try to boot.

Reboot and Verify

Now reboot the Orange Pi 5 with:

sudo reboot

With any luck you should be booted using your SSD! We can verify this with the mount command like this:

root@orangepi5:~# mount
/dev/nvme0n1p2 on / type ext4 (rw,noatime,errors=remount-ro,commit=600)
/dev/mmcblk1p1 on /boot type vfat (rw,relatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=936,iocharset=utf8,shortname=mixed,errors=remount-ro)
/dev/nvme0n1p2 on /var/log.hdd type ext4 (rw,noatime,errors=remount-ro,commit=600)

Here we can see that our root partition (/) is indeed on /dev/nvme0n1p2 and not /dev/mmcblk0p2. We can also see that my /boot folder is properly mounted is /dev/mmcblk0p1 (the SD card which is serving as our boot loader). Success!

Resize NVMe Partition (Added 1/24/2023)

You can use Orange Pi’s built in resize application if you are using one of the official operating systems:

sudo /usr/lib/orangepi/orangepi-resize-filesystem start

Testing Performance

For the guide I used a SSSTC 128GB 2230 M.2 NVMe drive. These are available on Amazon for around $10-12 (also see Kioxia 128GB M.2 2230 module*).

You can verify the performance of your drive on Pi Benchmarks using the following command:

sudo curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/TheRemote/PiBenchmarks/master/Storage.sh | sudo bash

Here are the results:

     Category                  Test                      Result     
HDParm                    Disk Read                 375.32 MB/s              
HDParm                    Cached Disk Read          381.15 MB/s              
DD                        Disk Write                234 MB/s                 
FIO                       4k random read            47080 IOPS (188321 KB/s) 
FIO                       4k random write           35128 IOPS (140514 KB/s) 
IOZone                    4k read                   75628 KB/s               
IOZone                    4k write                  67285 KB/s               
IOZone                    4k random read            35874 KB/s               
IOZone                    4k random write           70620 KB/s               

                          Score: 17,718

The full Orange Pi 5 benchmark can be viewed here on Pi Benchmarks.

That is an outstanding score. We are getting NVMe performance. This score actually even beats my ODROID M1 benchmark.

The Orange Pi 5 is without a doubt a very powerful board and is performing exactly where it should be.

Other Resources

I’ve also covered how to install Steam on the Orange Pi 5 here

I’ve also reviewed the Orange Pi portable monitor here (with the Orange Pi 5 connected)

If you are looking for alternative WiFi adapters for the Orange Pi 5 see my using E-keyed WiFi adapters with the Orange Pi 5 guide here!

I’ve written a review for the Orange Pi 5 available here

All of my single board computer reviews are available here

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jackduckworth
jackduckworth
1 year ago

Many thanks for these guides. I used your OPiZero2 guide to get my OPiZero2 running from an external drive, and the used this one to get my OPi5 running from an USB HDD, with /boot running on the card.

Then I saw you, and others, talking about moving everything to the HDD, and thought it would be nice to take the SD card out completely.

But nothing has worked. I have followed the general process of copying a dist to the HDD, and flashing the SPI. But every time I try to boot without the SD I get the red light + no green light.

When I try it again with the SD card it boots up but I have noticed
– /boot is running off the HDD, but / is on the SD card
– the contents of the SPI have changed

orangepi@orangepi5:~$ sudo md5sum /dev/mtdblock0 /usr/lib/linux-u-boot-legacy-orangepi5_1.1.2_arm64/rkspi_loader.img
6de777fb1bbd9a7c0a4207e4137452ce /dev/mtdblock0
1a62ad5f91789b7b422b23f9da5aee5c /usr/lib/linux-u-boot-legacy-orangepi5_1.1.2_arm64/rkspi_loader.img
orangepi@orangepi5:~$ lsblk -f
NAME FSTYPE FSVER LABEL UUID FSAVAIL FSUSE% MOUNTPOINT
sda
├─sda1 vfat FAT16 opi_boot 545D-A668 154.5M 40% /boot
└─sda2 ext4 1.0 opi_root 49c2697f-7f72-4fa4-ba25-b4820d09749a
mtdblock0
mmcblk1
├─mmcblk1p1 vfat FAT16 opi_boot 545D-A668
└─mmcblk1p2 ext4 1.0 opi_root 49c2697f-7f72-4fa4-ba25-b4820d09749a 26.1G 8% /
zram0 [SWAP]
zram1 153.6M 13% /var/log}}

I’ve tried the various Orange Pi distributions, and the Armbian ones, all with the same results.

I’m resigned to leaving the SD card in, as performance is still much improved, but it would be nice to free up the SD Card. I’m getting fed up having to buy an SD card every time I buy an SBC.

jackduckworth
jackduckworth
1 year ago

I was confused, but it wasn’t caused by you.

The Orange Pi OS menu option is labelled “Boot from SPI – system on SATA, USB or NVME”, and the Armbian one is “Boot from MTD Flash – system on SATA, USB or NVMe”.

No worries – I can live with running the bootloader from the SD card. Performance is pretty good.

In the future I will maybe buy an NVMe drive, run the OS and bootloader from that, and use the USD HDD for storage. But NVMe drives aren’t looking particularly good value currently.

jackduckworth
jackduckworth
1 year ago

$12 sounds sweet, that’s not much more than an SD card.

Both of those NVMes are over $40 on amazon.co.uk however. (Maybe that’s the Brexit dividend…)

zen0
zen0
9 months ago
Reply to  jackduckworth

Why don’ you try to change UUID in the /etc/fstab (located in the sda2) to pointing out the correct /boot (sda1), not that in the SD card? And you should able to boot without SD card

Owl Creek Tech
Owl Creek Tech
1 year ago

Good news, it seems Android 12 1.02 will detect RTL8821CU based WiFI/BT USB dongles even with ROM chips. You must make sure it is plugged in from a cold (power) boot and you may have to repeat the process. The one that like because of its built in stick antenna is this one on Amazon. Also EZcast makes a dongle with just the RT8821CU chip AND NO ROM that you do not need to use a ROM Switch function in Linux and is immediately seen by Android 1.02. Sadly this does not have a dipole antenna so you are limited in range but it does work. Just head out to this link.

Also BT does work while using WiFi (quite well). even with continuous stream BT audio, which I am using while watching a 4K video.

One more note: There is a new Android “Box” build on OrangePi which is for, you guessed it, for TV Box use or ‘Android TV’ I downloaded it and burned it to NVME and it booted right up and recognized my better RTL8821CU with dipole stick antenna, but like the previous Android build it is not Google Playstore certified so you will have to add GAPPs. Since my goal is to create the “Gaming Lens” with built in QLED 720P 7″ panel on DualShock 4 controller, I prefer the “tablet” build.

I have also added a very small 5VDC, 25mm square fan that is 7mm deep but running it at 3.3VDC. It is extremely quiet and more important consumes about 25ma (every little bit counts when you are trying run this from a 6000mAH Li-ION or 4A 5VDC wall unit PLUS QLED screen & game controller). I may add a negative coefficient thermistor to it vary the RPMs based on actual temp. For now it it runs well with my low profile heatsink and has kept the RK3388s from hitting its thermal ceiling early. My 3DMark score has gone up to 4400 points, which puts it top 25% of ARM64 based chips out there. With more work, I was able to get Armbian to produce similar results.

Final Note: Two more companies are going to be offering RK3388s board at the size. Pricing is bit more, but will offer onboard Wifi/BT.

It has taken awhile (thanks all of you for adding your own tips and tricks) but this is the new “Pi” in my book and hopefully the ARM64 dev community will support it over the “other”ARM64 chip from Apple. I can’t believe the performance that I am getting for less than $100 including a 256GB NVME. To put it in perspective. The Mac Mini M1 is $499 has only 8GB of RAM and 256GB NVM and take up about 8 times the space. Don’t get me wrong a LOVE my Mac Mini M1 and will probably get a M2, but OrangePi has hit it out of the park with the little ARM64/Mail GPU board.

Razor Burn
Razor Burn
1 year ago
Reply to  Owl Creek Tech

Its been a pleasure reading all your helpful tips so thank you Owl Creek Tech and I hope you share a photo of your final setup once its ready!

032F
032F
1 year ago

None of my OrangePi5 pibenchmarks gets posted. I tried Ubuntu, Debian and Armbian.
I got a 22711 and one slightly higher (I think it was 22761) with a Kingston 256GB 2230-NVMe on Armbian.
But it works with my RaspberryPi3B.

032F
032F
1 year ago

Awesome! That was quick. Thanks for that!
I had a coupon and bought a ‘Dell’-NVME directly from Dell which would have had a different appearance. They send me this Kingston instead.
You’re right, my drive is a 2230, not a 2280 like the one in the current image of my score.
It looks like this.

032F
032F
1 year ago

Thanks to the brand category I can now also see my earlier score which I did anonymously. This one only had 20618 and was a Debian Desktop. My last score was Armbian CLI. My guess is CLI vs Desktop makes a lot of difference and I also changed the CPU governor to performance.

032F
032F
1 year ago

I just gave Debian another try. This time CLI instead of Desktop and of course CPU performance governor.
I’m not expecting to win against WesternDigital. Top2 is good enough for me 😉
But I cannot recommend this specific distro at the moment. It seems to have some corrupted files. I hope this gets fixed with updated images.

032F
032F
1 year ago

Hi again…
Like in my first comment here my pibenchmark (which I did yesterday) doesn’t get posted. I got a 98488 score with my new pc hardware. Sadly, I once again missed #1 only quiet narrowly 😉

032F
032F
1 year ago

I can live with a little bit more waiting 😉
I guess that your explanation would mean there could be other currently not-listed Top-Scores?! My hardware is not the best there is (e.g. the CPU isn’t even overclockable). It will be interesting to see other results with similar components.
Please excuse my obsessiveness, but I desperately wanted to hit the 100K score threshold. So I did some testing with different BIOS configurations. After a couple of underwhelming runs, I finally managed to hit my mark with a 104527 score. I don’t want to spam the highscore, feel free to delete the lowest scores if that’s possible.
I will enjoy my time of fame (if there aren’t other hidden better Top-Scores already, hehe).

032F
032F
1 year ago

Two weekends have passed. Which one are we talking about?! 😉
By the way, the highest score I pulled off before installing windows on that drive was something 108XX 🙂

032F
032F
1 year ago

Just a reminder that now a whole month has passed 😉
I guess by now there might be several higher scores with newer drives than mine (which is a PCIe 4.0 NVMe). PCIe 5.0 SSDs are already on the market.

032F
032F
11 months ago

Finally a sign of life! It’s been three additional months.
I see that the score corrections you mentioned have been applied.
I still keep waiting for my scores to appear as I check the site on a regular basis 😉

032F
032F
10 months ago

Nothing yet. I’ll keep waiting.

Strangely, all of a sudden, there seems to be something wrong with the NVMe. It’s a Samsung 990 Pro and the Samsung Magician software now always crashes when I try to start it. The S.M.A.R.T. readout seems to be the issue. But I’m not really sure. Otherwise the drive seems to be working just fine. I might have to do a warranty return.
In the coming days I’m also going to replace the CPU, the non-K i7-13700 with a i9-14900K. If I manage to overclock it as I like to, then it will be a full 1Ghz difference. This should be noticeable in every aspect.
If I then get a new NVMe I will try to achieve even higher scores. The new CPU should help.

Regarding the OPi5, we’re finally getting a mostly finished mainline kernel very soon it seems 🙂
https://www.reddit.com/r/OrangePI/comments/18939es/hdmi_out_now_working_on_orange_pi_5_with_mainline/

032F
032F
10 months ago
Reply to  032F

Just to follow up with my last rambling, I finally found the problem with the Samsung Magician SSD software!
The NVMe drive is perfectly fine. The reason the software always crashed, even with a clean Windows install, had nothing to do with the NVMe at all. After defaulting the BIOS settings the software worked again. And after some more testing I found the responsible setting: “CPU Flex Ratio” which I set to its minimum. It has the only relevant effect to list the CPU base clock in the windows task manager below the CPU’s normal base clock down to 0.8 GHz. It didn’t do/effect anything else, except this strangely programmed ‘cpu-unrelated’ software lol.

032F
032F
9 months ago

Reminder: It’s now half a year of waiting for my scores.

032F
032F
8 months ago

‎Good that I did a screenshot of at least score 😉
2023.‎07.‎25
comment image

032F
032F
8 months ago

In case my post that I did couple of days ago didn’t come through, here’s the repost of it:

Good that I did a screenshot of at least one score that I did back then…
2023.07.25

032F
032F
8 months ago

I’ve found another screenshot on my USB drive…
2023.07.30

Harutyun
Harutyun
1 year ago

hello everyone, my problem is not detected by the nvme drive, I connect the LED to the board, but the system does not determine what to do thanks in advance

Harutyun
Harutyun
1 year ago

I think m2 pcie 2.0 does not work on the pc ssd earned or separately install the driver?

Phil
Phil
1 year ago

Thanks James for this inciteful guide.

I have been playing around trying to get Armbian to boot from an external SSD plugged into the top USB 3.0 port and have partial (or rather temporary success).

My initial set-up was to have Orange Pi OS (droid) to my NVME drive.

I then installed Armbian to an SD card, which booted fine.

I then followed the above instructions and managed to clone the card installation to the SSD and get it to boot.

But, I have found a flaw that I am unable to fathom.

As long as the SD card is physically present, whether after a reboot or power off, booting from the external SSD is successful.

After powering off though, if I then remove the SD card, when booting, Orange Pi OS from the VVME drive boots and I am unable to boot from the SSD unless I plug the SD card in again.

Any ideas?

Phil
Phil
1 year ago

Thanks for the info James.

I did write the bootloader to the SPI flash with the Armbian tool.

I suspect that because the SPI flash can hold multiple things that perhaps without something to manage multiple boot options, like a petitboot that it will be rather fiddly.

I get the concept of what is required though and will swap about as necessary until Orange Pi come up with a better solution to using multiple OS’s.

But it was still good to se that USB boot is possible, so it bodes good things for the future.

Razor Burn
Razor Burn
1 year ago

Hi James,

So I followed your suggestion and flashed Armbian to the NVMe and its now showing with the different partitions and an unallocated amount totaling 231.33GiBs

I then went to:

sudo armbian-config

Install to/update boot loader OK

5 Install /Update the boot loader on SD/eMMC

I then tried booting from:

4 Boot from MTD Flash – system on SATA, USB or nVME

I then get an error message saying: “There is not enough free capacity on /dev/. Please check your device”

A quick check of GParted shows :

unallocated 16.00MiB
/dev/nvme0n1p1 (key symbol) bootfs
/dev/nvme0n1p2 rootfs
unallocated

/dev/nvme0n1 (238.47 GiB)

I assume this means that the boot loader has saved to the nvme so I tried starting up without the SD Card and all I get is flashing red light and a black screen with things booting back up when I reinsert the SD Card.

I’m not sure what I’m missing and will probably look to go with one of the official Orange Pi distros instead as your instructions seem clearer and I wasn’t really able to find any answers on the Armbian forum so I don’t want to trouble you by suggesting that you do a separate SSD booting guide just for Armbian as its still fairly new with weekly updates and I’ll give your suggestion trying Debian/Ubuntu a go over the weekend as the instructions look simpler… Thanks again for the support!

Razor Burn
Razor Burn
1 year ago

Ok so I did some googling and saw a post on Reddit “Booting Orange Pi 5 from NVMe SSD”

Use etcher (or your preferred imaging tool) to write the OS image to an SD card

Use etcher again to write the same image to your NVMe SSD

Insert both the SD card and the NVMe SSD into the Orange Pi 5

Power on the Orange Pi (the first time around it will boot from the SD card)

SSH into the Orange Pi 5, and run: orangepi-config (or armbian-install if you’re using armbian)

Select boot options, then select: Install/Update the bootloader on SPI Flash (this might be Install/Update the bootloader on MTD Flash if using armbian)

Once this is complete, you can remove the SD card and the device will now be able to boot directly from NVMe (SD card is no longer needed — this is true even if you decide to re-image your NVMe SSD)

I followed those steps and got an error when selecting to boot from MTD Flash so shut down yet Armbian load screen popped up and I gathered I’d try restarting without the SD Card and eureka my Pi 5 now boots from NVMe so no need for the sd card!

I really appreciate your support James as it takes true dedication and passion to put in the many hours making these informative reviews and guides, not to mention answering the any questions and troubleshooting users problems so thank you!

Razor Burn
Razor Burn
1 year ago

Thanks for the kind words James and for hosting such an informative blog with ma wonderful support network!

Now my initial joy turned to dispair as I managed to corrupt something causing Armbian to not want to load so I a have spent the best part of the day flashing different versions finding issues with the lastest version from Github that wouldn’t load a web browser, then tried the Cinnamon version off their website and experienced problems with 3D accellaration crashing firefox so have settled on the Jammy Gnome desktop version dated 23 Jan 2023 which is so far snappy and hasn’t caused me any new issues booting from the NVMe.

I apologies as I’ve run a few benchmark tests so my results might muck up the averages but I did notice that I achieved a higher score on my first try running Armbian 22.11.4 Jammy where I managed to get a half decent score of 20,861 and 235MB/s DD yet subsequent tests have been mixed even after I did firware updates with last one 20,396 and 233MB/s DD. I’m not complaining as thats almost 4 x SD Card speeds and I’m intrigued to see how this will compare to the upcoming Rock 5A that I read is scheduled for April 2023 so still a little while off?

Its really a shame that the vendors are releasing operating systems without the latest kernels nor proper boot loaders as it then means developers are patching things yet as we see with the RK3588 their are legitimate security concerns using an outdated kernel not to mention bugs that take ages to fix (if even possible) and as my recent experience shows you can expect to see mixed results when using different versions of the same distro which makes for a steep learning curve which is why I’m greatful for websites such as yours as you take the time to explain things clearly so a newbie like myself can appreciate!

I’m hopeful that down the road we get the RK3588 mainline support as is seen with the RK3399/RK3568, with kernel “6.3” expected in a few months and I read they’re already hard at work on the Rock 5A which fills me with confidence but had you told me in late November 2022 that the Orange Pi 5 would be heavily supported with Armbian, RebornOS from the Rock 5B version let alone Batocera or JELOS I’d have remarked how it was optomistic yet here we are a few months on and the choices for operating systems is wonderful and we haven’t even seen proper Orange PiOS which might end up a real game changer if they can sort out the licencing and give it continued support?!

We often complain at Raspberry Pi for a host of issues but thanks in large part to the dedicated support its a much more user friendly experience as you can swapout operating systems with ease and I hope your wish becomes reality and we see the boot loader dilema fixed as its painful needing to constantly flash and reflash although setting up NVMe before hand makes the process simpler its still not ideal and if Orange Pi, Radxa, Banana Pi, XXX, want to be seen as true alternatives they need to get this resolved quick as the performance of the alternative SBCs have started to catch up however software support is still behind and Raspberry Pi knows this but I’m an optomist and look forward to what 2023 will bring as RPi decide to sit things out…

I can’t wait to see what you have planned for the next review or follow ups with the previous boards and apologies for taking up too much of the comments as I’m sure somebody else has something constructive to ask/share… Take care good sir!

Razor Burn
Razor Burn
1 year ago

So many valid points made James as many critics love to cite how bad post support is for the alternative boards yet forget that it took years for RPi to reach the levels we see now due to the larger community work and what helps RPi is the fact they stick with same hardware whereas the competition chops and changes looking for the next best SOC yet little dedication is made fixing the previous models. More needs to be done by chip makers who won’t share source code leaving amateur developers to do all the leg work and in turn a frustrated user base questioning why they should make the switch when the RPi works out of the box…?

In my opinion we need more blogs such as yours to question the decisions of vendors who seem to follow the same bad trends and as a consumer I hope to see more being done to make things user friendly and agree 100% that future SBCs need to arrive with the ability to boot off SSD/USB on arrival as relying on SD cards in 2023 to run your device is a joke as they’re slow, prone to corrupting and expensive for technology that was primarily meant as storage for ones digital camera yet the appeal of having different operating systems on multiple cards is great but not sustainable as the cost for cards can equal more than the SBC price alone!

I often question the motivation of vendors such as Pine64 as they seem to try innovating things yet the lack of software is always brought up that I feel its a gamble purchasing one of their devices as you’re on your own dealing with an obsolete board that never worked properly to begin with and I see they’re now selling PineBuds Pro “Open Firmware Capable ANC Wireless Earbuds” for what looks to be interesting yet very little support is given and it almost seems as though they’ve gone with a concept and then its up to the user to find solutions and the mere fact it says multiple flashing can brick the device will scare potential buyers such as myself away out of fear of attempting to do anything constructive with these earbuds?! Not to mention the lack of any news on their RK3588 Dev Board the QuartzPro64 that looks suspiciously similar to one under development from Geniatech DB3588 that was due to launch back in August 2022…???

That’s not to take away from the great job they did with the Pinecil as its my go-to soldering iron and they’re doing great work with RISC-V as evident with the Ox64 and planned Star64 but I could say the same things for Banana Pi who seem to have many different devices released or in the works yet nobody seems to rate them due to lack of support or originality which is a real shame as successful author Nancy Pearcy summed it up best “Competition is always a good thing. It forces us to do our best. A monopoly renders people complacent and satisfied with mediocrity.” I appreciate limitations to supplies, small budgets, licensing, etc yet consumers want the best bang for their buck and what we’ve seen from Orange Pi and Radxa lately is a step in the right direction so I look forward to your Pi 800 review as hoping to see significant progress with software since its initial release and how the RK3399 stacks up against the overclocked Broadcom BCM2711 in the Pi 400. I’m holding out to see the accessories and any capability with the Pi 5 as the RK3399 seems to be better supported. Finally awaiting the XIAO and Grove reviews with hopes that my dev kit arrives next week so I can follow along and learn in the process. Take care!

Razor Burn
Razor Burn
1 year ago

I hope you do try the open-source wearables from Pine64 or similar as the concept is very interesting and my comments were more a frustration than anything else as I truly wish them success and the fact they’re willing to expand into earbuds, phones, laptops is fantastic and I’m glad you managed to grab a Pinecil as they’re always out of stock and maybe going with Amazon will mean it ships earlier as they’re web shop states they’re shut for the holidays…?

You influenced me to place a few orders for the Seeed gear and I’m excited to see how you go with the initial testing and who knows you may want to expand into the other Seeed gear as I see the XIAO dev boards come with different chips and the Seeed XIAO BLE nRF52840 Sense version has me super interested as it uses a chip from Nordic Semiconductor who specialise in all things LE BLE, Wireless and IoT prototyping which is remarkable for such a small form factor and the specs are impressive as are the ESP32-C3 board! I promise I’ll stop bugging you as I’m a bad influence and the last thing you need is the wife quizzing you about the unplanned technology purchases LOL…

Алексей
Алексей
1 year ago
Reply to  Razor Burn

Огромное тебе спасибо! Пол дня потратил на данное действие. Но стоило мне прочесть тебя, как всё встало на свои места. Я вытщил флэшку и вау ля! Всё работает!

Google Translate Translation added by James:
Thank you very much! Spent half a day doing this. But as soon as I read you, everything fell into place. I pulled out the flash drive and wow la! Everything is working!

Razor Burn
Razor Burn
1 year ago
Reply to  Алексей

Ура!!! Mое удовольствие Алексей.
Hurray! My pleasure Aleksei.

Mahdi
Mahdi
1 year ago

Hi again,
I still cannot boot directly from ssd. The only difference between your tutorial and other tutorials that can boot from ssd any my case is that in my case the ssd drive is recognized as sda not as nvme. Is that a problem?

Mahdi
Mahdi
1 year ago
Reply to  Mahdi

Here is the output of Debug/UART serial port:

DDR Version V1.08 20220617
LPDDR4X, 2112MHz
channel[0] BW=16 Col=10 Bk=8 CS0 Row=16 CS=1 Die BW=16 Size=1024MB
channel[1] BW=16 Col=10 Bk=8 CS0 Row=16 CS=1 Die BW=16 Size=1024MB
channel[2] BW=16 Col=10 Bk=8 CS0 Row=16 CS=1 Die BW=16 Size=1024MB
channel[3] BW=16 Col=10 Bk=8 CS0 Row=16 CS=1 Die BW=16 Size=1024MB
Manufacturer ID:0x1 Samsung
CH0 RX Vref:34.7%, TX Vref:18.8%,0.0%
CH1 RX Vref:32.7%, TX Vref:18.8%,0.0%
CH2 RX Vref:32.7%, TX Vref:18.8%,0.0%
CH3 RX Vref:31.7%, TX Vref:17.8%,0.0%
change to F1: 528MHz
change to F2: 1068MHz
change to F3: 1560MHz
change to F0: 2112MHz
out
U-Boot SPL board init
U-Boot SPL 2017.09-orangepi (Jan 06 2023 - 14:00:02)
Trying to boot from MMC2
spl: mmc init failed with error: -123
Trying to boot from MMC1
Card did not respond to voltage select!
spl: mmc init failed with error: -95
Trying to boot from MTD2
Trying fit image at 0x4000 sector
## Verified-boot: 0
## Checking atf-1 0x00040000 ... sha256(806278dba1...) + OK
## Checking uboot 0x00200000 ... sha256(b1fc1e0a9d...) + OK
## Checking fdt 0x0034b500 ... sha256(feafd7cda6...) + OK
## Checking atf-2 0x000f0000 ... sha256(c00c7fd75b...) + OK
## Checking atf-3 0xff100000 ... sha256(71c3a5841b...) + OK
## Checking atf-4 0xff001000 ... sha256(2301cf73be...) + OK
Jumping to U-Boot(0x00200000) via ARM Trusted Firmware(0x00040000)
Total: 505.204 ms

INFO: Preloader serial: 2
NOTICE: BL31: v2.3():v2.3-405-gb52c2eadd:derrick.huang
NOTICE: BL31: Built : 11:23:47, Aug 15 2022
INFO: spec: 0x13
INFO: ext 32k is valid
INFO: GICv3 without legacy support detected.
INFO: ARM GICv3 driver initialized in EL3
INFO: system boots from cpu-hwid-0
INFO: idle_st=0x21fff, pd_st=0x11fff9, repair_st=0xfff70001
INFO: dfs DDR fsp_params[0].freq_mhz= 2112MHz
INFO: dfs DDR fsp_params[1].freq_mhz= 528MHz
INFO: dfs DDR fsp_params[2].freq_mhz= 1068MHz
INFO: dfs DDR fsp_params[3].freq_mhz= 1560MHz
INFO: BL31: Initialising Exception Handling Framework
INFO: BL31: Initializing runtime services
WARNING: No OPTEE provided by BL2 boot loader, Booting device without OPTEE init ialization. SMC`s destined for OPTEE will return SMC_UNK
ERROR: Error initializing runtime service opteed_fast
INFO: BL31: Preparing for EL3 exit to normal world
INFO: Entry point address = 0x200000
INFO: SPSR = 0x3c9

U-Boot 2017.09-orangepi (Jan 06 2023 - 14:00:02 +0800)

Model: Orange Pi 5
PreSerial: 2, raw, 0xfeb50000
DRAM: 3.7 GiB
Sysmem: init
Relocation Offset: eda2b000
Relocation fdt: eb9f91c8 - eb9fecc8
CR: M/C/I
Using default environment

SF: Detected sfc_nor with page size 256 Bytes, erase size 4 KiB, total 16 MiB
Bootdev(atags): mtd 2
PartType: EFI
DM: v1
boot mode: None
Model: Orange Pi 5
CLK: (sync kernel. arm: enter 1008000 KHz, init 1008000 KHz, kernel 0N/A)
b0pll 24000 KHz
b1pll 24000 KHz
lpll 24000 KHz
v0pll 24000 KHz
aupll 24000 KHz
cpll 1500000 KHz
gpll 1188000 KHz
npll 24000 KHz
ppll 1100000 KHz
aclk_center_root 702000 KHz
pclk_center_root 100000 KHz
hclk_center_root 396000 KHz
aclk_center_low_root 500000 KHz
aclk_top_root 750000 KHz
pclk_top_root 100000 KHz
aclk_low_top_root 396000 KHz
Net: No ethernet found.
Hit key to stop autoboot('CTRL+C'): 0
mmc@fe2c0000: 1
mmc@fe2e0000: 0
PCIe-0 Link Fail

Device 0: unknown device
scanning bus for devices...

Device 0: unknown device

Device 2: Vendor: 0x2207 Rev: V1.00 Prod: sfc_nor
Type: Hard Disk
Capacity: 16.0 MB = 0.0 GB (32768 x 512)
... is now current device
Failed to mount ext2 filesystem...
** Unrecognized filesystem type **

Device 1:
Device 0: unknown device
starting USB...
Bus usb@fc000000: usb maximum-speed not found
Register 2000140 NbrPorts 2
Starting the controller
USB XHCI 1.10
Bus usb@fc800000: USB EHCI 1.00
Bus usb@fc840000: failed to get usb phy
Port not available.
Bus usb@fc880000: USB EHCI 1.00
Bus usb@fc8c0000: USB OHCI 1.0
Bus usb@fcd00000: usb maximum-speed not found
Register 2000140 NbrPorts 2
Starting the controller
USB XHCI 1.10
scanning bus usb@fc000000 for devices... 1 USB Device(s) found
scanning bus usb@fc800000 for devices... 1 USB Device(s) found
scanning bus usb@fc880000 for devices... 1 USB Device(s) found
scanning bus usb@fc8c0000 for devices... 1 USB Device(s) found
scanning bus usb@fcd00000 for devices... 1 USB Device(s) found
scanning usb for storage devices... 0 Storage Device(s) found

Device 0: unknown device
failed to find reset-gpios property
No ethernet found.
missing environment variable: pxeuuid
missing environment variable: bootfile
Retrieving file: pxelinux.cfg/00000000
No ethernet found.
missing environment variable: bootfile
Retrieving file: pxelinux.cfg/0000000
No ethernet found.
missing environment variable: bootfile
Retrieving file: pxelinux.cfg/000000
No ethernet found.
missing environment variable: bootfile
Retrieving file: pxelinux.cfg/00000
No ethernet found.
missing environment variable: bootfile
Retrieving file: pxelinux.cfg/0000
No ethernet found.
missing environment variable: bootfile
Retrieving file: pxelinux.cfg/000
No ethernet found.
missing environment variable: bootfile
Retrieving file: pxelinux.cfg/00
No ethernet found.
missing environment variable: bootfile
Retrieving file: pxelinux.cfg/0
No ethernet found.
missing environment variable: bootfile
Retrieving file: pxelinux.cfg/default-arm-rockchip
No ethernet found.
missing environment variable: bootfile
Retrieving file: pxelinux.cfg/default-arm
No ethernet found.
missing environment variable: bootfile
Retrieving file: pxelinux.cfg/default
No ethernet found.
Config file not found
failed to find reset-gpios property
No ethernet found.
Could not get mtd 0
## Booting FIT Image FIT: No fit blob
FIT: No FIT image
Unknown command 'bootrkp' - try 'help'
opi# dir
Unknown command 'dir' - try 'help'
opi#

Mahdi
Mahdi
1 year ago
Reply to  Mahdi

here is what I did:

1- Flashed a SD card with latest orange pi image version jammy 1.1.0.
2- Flashed a SSD with the same image
3- Plugged both SD and SSD
4- Logged in and Install/Update the bootloader on SPI flash
5- Unplugged the SD card.

Unfortunately it does not boot from SSD.

Mahdi
Mahdi
1 year ago

I really thank you. I tried over 50 times with this M.2 SATA. I even did not know there are different M.2 drive. I really thank you again.

Mahdi
Mahdi
1 year ago

I tested today and it works. I can boot from SSD now. Thanks.