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M.2 PCIe SSD

The RB700 Advance has one M.2 2242 key B socket for an SSD or any other device with PCIe 2.0 x1 interface support.

Any disk with the following specifications will be compatible:

  • Form Factor: M.2 2242 (42mm length),
  • Key Type: B-Key,
  • Interface: NVMe PCIe.

Important Notes:

  • M.2 SATA SSDs will NOT work – only NVMe PCIe is supported,
  • Ensure the SSD has a 2242 form factor; a 2280 will not fit.

Important Safety Notice – M.2 Slot Usage

The M.2 slot on Pigeon computers does not support hot-plug or hot-swap functionality.
Connecting or disconnecting an M.2 module while the system is powered on may result in:

  • permanent damage to the M.2 device or the system board,
  • electrical hazards to the user,
  • system instability or malfunction.

Always power off and fully disconnect the system before installing or removing M.2 modules.

This limitation stems from the M.2 standard itself, which lacks support for hot-plug detection and controlled power sequencing. The connector is intended for fixed, cold-insertion configurations only.

Example Configuration of Western Digital PC SN520 SSD

The Western Digital PC SN520 SSD will be used to demonstrate an example configuration. To check if the SSD is properly connected, use the following commands:

$ lspci
00:00.0 PCI bridge: Broadcom Inc. and subsidiaries BCM2711 PCIe Bridge (rev 20)
01:00.0 Non-Volatile memory controller: Sandisk Corp PC SN520 NVMe SSD (rev 01)

$ lsblk | grep nvme
nvme0n1 259:0 0 119.2G 0 disk

Example configuration (one partition, ext4 filesystem): 

$ parted /dev/nvme0n1 mklabel gpt

$ parted /dev/nvme0n1 mkpart primary ext4 0% 100%

$ parted /dev/nvme0n1 print
Model: WDC PC SN520 SDAPMUW-128G-1101 (nvme)
Disk /dev/nvme0n1: 128GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt
Disk Flags:

Number Start End Size File system Name Flags
1 1049kB 128GB 128GB fat32 primary

$ mkfs -t ext4 /dev/nvme0n1p1
mke2fs 1.46.2 (28-Feb-2021)
/dev/nvme0n1p1 contains a vfat file system
Proceed anyway? (y,N) y
Discarding device blocks: done
Creating filesystem with 31258368 4k blocks and 7815168 inodes
Filesystem UUID: 1e7a051d-4da1-4b3b-a44d-fb1a73ce4ed4
Superblock backups stored on blocks:
32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912, 819200, 884736, 1605632, 2654208,
4096000, 7962624, 11239424, 20480000, 23887872

Allocating group tables: done
Writing inode tables: done
Creating journal (131072 blocks): done
Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done

$ blkid | grep nvme
/dev/nvme0n1p1: UUID="1e7a051d-4da1-4b3b-a44d-fb1a73ce4ed4" BLOCK_SIZE="4096" TYPE="ext4" PARTLABEL="primary" PARTUUID="003c73f4-ac0e-4c27-a57e-8f363d9ebd75"

$ mkdir /mnt/ssd

$ mount /dev/nvme0n1p1 /mnt/ssd

$ df -h | grep ssd
/dev/nvme0n1p1 117G 24K 111G 1% /mnt/ssd