The Pineberry Pi HAT Drive was among the first boards we saw that aimed to add easy SSD support to the Raspberry Pi 5—and we enjoyed our experience. However, Geekworm has taken the idea even further by offering a new HAT called the X1004 Dual 2280 NVMe SSD Shield that supports not one but two NVMe SSDs for the Pi 5 to use.
As exciting as this new board is, there's one big caveat you should be aware of. This HAT is an excellent choice for anyone looking to add more storage to their Raspberry Pi 5 setup; however, it doesn't offer support for SSD booting. So you won't be able to load any operating system off either SSD connected to the HAT.
This could be subject to change in the future; however, as the product page indicates, the support isn't offered via the current firmware. Another limitation comes in its power delivery. According to Geekworm, the X1004 Dual 2280 NVMe SSD Shield can only provide 3.5A to each drive.
The HAT features several LEDs that make it easy to check the drive status and power usage at a glance. It can provide up to 8TB of storage using two 4TB SSDs and supports full-sized 2280 NVMe drives. The X1004 HAT is compatible with the official active cooler and can reach transfer speeds as high as 8 Gbps over PCIe 3.0.
This HAT is also stackable, so you can easily attach more HATs on top of it. If you want to look at the X1004 Dual 2280 NVMe SSD Shield, check out the official product listing shared with AliExpress by Geekworm. It's retailing for $42.99 with bundle options that include a power supply and cooler at a slightly higher price of $59.99.
