Raspberry Pi 5, Neo 5 nvme, WD black and Ubuntu

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The title basically says it all. I’ve been fighting with my new Neo 5 nvme case (looks cool, excellent construction) all day. What I’m dealing with:

Raspberry pi 5
WD Black 850X (2tb)
Argon Neo 5 nvme case

Trying to install Ubuntu to the SSD just doesn’t work. I’ve gone around and around and finally decided to try and install PiOS and following the scripts in the manual but it ended up with a pcie error with some weird command prompt. Likewise Ubuntu would just go into the loading screen for like 10 minutes and end with another weird command prompt.

My guess is the drive is not compatible with the neo 5.

Any help or advice would be appreciated.

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If you have an NVME enclosure or dock and another computer. Initialize the WD drive and format it . Then use the Raspberry PI imager to load the PI Unbuntu image on the NVME. Run all the scripts in the Argon instructions from Raspbian on the SD Card. Install the NVME drive and it should work. You can remove the SD Card first if you would like, but it worked for me with a WD Blue without doing that.

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I had issues and then got it setup.

I can help on Discord.

@ ai_armageddon

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Format it? I mean. Doesn’t writing the Ubuntu image to it do that anyway?

I found one of the reasons I failed last time was the pi imager was messed up. I downloaded the full Ubuntu image from the official site and tried again today. It just doesn’t work. The script also doesn’t work so I input it manually. Also doesn’t work.

It’s not picking up the drive. How exactly did you get yours working?

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I didn’t want to format the M.2 elsewhere.

So I installed the hardware and also used a microSD temporarily.
(blank).

Verified that my Pi was able to see the M.2 on my unit. The first time I used a random brand M.2 and it wasn’t showing up.

Got a Kingston brand and tried again and it was identifiable.

Then, I downloaded Raspberry Pi Imager on the Pi, used it to install OS on the M.2.

Booted into it, setup, all was good.

Formatted the microSD to be blank, changed boot priority to M.2.

And that was it.

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The fella that replied to this is correct.

Can you post some errors?

If you have the Pi OS running on MicroSD, can you show us commands that show the M.2 is properly installed physically and identifiable, before trying to get the OS on it?

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I can get the drive to show up and even boot with Ubuntu running. For some reason, when I reboot it downgrades the EEPROM and it won’t upgrade again.

I have a SD that changes the EEPROM order back to boot from SD first and then it picks up the drive again. When I reboot again, bam, I’m back into my SD.

Sorry, I’m kinda new to all this stuff. Why won’t the updated EEPROM stick?

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1000030703
10000307031920×2560 835 KB

A pic showing it actually picking up the drive and reading at pcie 3 speeds.

Next time I reboot, it won’t pick it up anymore.

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Can someone help me out here? So far, my biggest regret this year is buying this case.

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Same issue with Argon ONE V3 M.2 NVMe PCIE, with raspberry pi 5 and WD Black SN850X 1TB drive, Ubuntu 24.
It gets stuck with a message “Gave up waiting for root file system device …” and a prompt “initramfs”

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UPDATE: it works great with Samsung 980 Pro (PICe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD) 1 TB.
Avoid WD Black disks.

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Did you install pi OS or Ubuntu? Followed the instructions in the manual? Got some details?

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WD Black has compatibility issues.

Search for “NVMe_SSD_boot_with_the_Raspberry_Pi_5”, I cannot put the link here, my post gets marked as spam.