ARGON ONE M.2 Expansion Board issue

ARGON ONE (V2 and M.2) DISCUSSION
1

Hello! I’m a bit new to all of this, and I haven’t been able to find an answer while lurking, so I figured I’d post and see if someone could help me.

I recently purchased an Argon One M.2. to use a Rasperry Pi 4 to run a small Plex server. I have Rasbian running off a SD card, no issues with that. The problem is no matter what I do, I cannot anything to recognize the SSD I have connected (A 2 TB WD-Black SNN850X NVMe SSD). I’m looking to use the SSD just for storage, not for running the OS.

Things of note

  • When I connect the board with the SSD to the raspberry pi with the included bridge, it does detect the expansion board, just not the SSD.

  • When I use a USB 3.0 cable to connect the board with SSD to a PC or a Mac, the computers do not detect it. As a result, I cannot use the tool that was posted elsewhere to see if I need to update the board’s firmware

Hoping someone can point me in the right direction

2

Hi

I have the argon one m2, if you have the same version you may need to source an m2 Sata ssd (not nvme)

https://docs.rs-online.com/a63f/A700000007741972.pdf

Confusingly there is a nvme option:
https://thepihut.com/products/m-2-nvme-expansion-board-for-argon-one?variant=42169136873667&currency=GBP&utm_medium=product_sync&utm_source=google&utm_content=sag_organic&utm_campaign=sag_organic&gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjw_e2wBhAEEiwAyFFFoyWhxo3CiHxu9lSvbKfh5asmBH-AChYQmaPlRTyHz7-U3d6X2IfqnhoCXeYQAvD_BwE

I went for a Kingston 256gb m2 sata ssd, it works well but the pi 4 gets confused booting from it when I have another usb hdd attached at boot, I’m running open media vault, I’m considering getting a better microsd and reinstalling omv on that and changing it back to boot from microsd.

3

I’ve ordered a different SSD. I just realized after you pointed out what I needed that the other problem may be that what I’ve got is an M-key, and this thing is only compatible with B or B/M keys. Might be thee whole source of my issue. I’ll try to remember to post an update once the part arrives

4

Cool, hope it works out for you. I also used a usb A to usb A cable so I could write the image direct to the SSD from my pc, just unplug the usb a to a jumper from the top of the case to the base and connect the base straight to pc.

For me that was an easy / lazy way and also allows me to make a 1:1 backup of the SSD :wink:

5

I would have thought your SSD is ok. I have this one and its perfect: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0843B58S7
Seems more or less the same?

There are two different versions of the board NVME and SATA. As others have said before you need to make sure you got the matching SSD to your board.

Main reason I’m replying; When I installed mine it seemed at first too that it wasnt detected. Like no sign of it with UI tools. Only when I looked with command line tools I was able to ‘see’ it. ‘blkid’, ‘lspci’, ‘lsusb’ that sort of thing. Remember it’s still a USB bridge solution so the drive will logically still be a USB drive. Either way it was completely uninitialised and some tools just ignored it. Once identified as /dev/suchandsuch I was able to partition and format with fdisk/gdisk and all was good.

Since then I ran different stuff off the SSD. Atm I use OSMC and I boot off an SD card with root on the SSD, but thats an OSMC restriction. I had raspbian on it and was able to boot off the SSD no SD card involved without a problem.

Good luck. When it’s all working it’s a really nice case/solution. I have the Argon remote with it and its probably the best Kodi box solution there is.