“The HatDrive! Nano itself works great now it's installed alongside the ActiveCooler. I'm getting write speeds of nearly 1 gigabit and don't have to worry about SD card wear..
However there is a complete lack of installation instructions either supplied or online. I read somewhere that you could follow the instructions for the regular HatDrive and that managed to get me going in the end.
Also no mention that it doesn't work with the standard cooler on the pi5 case - I figured if it says it fits in the standard case it'd be fine, but you need to remove the fan and its mount before it'll fit. Then you need to add the Active Cooler to keep a lid on temps if you're doing anything remotely challenging with it.
Finally I didn't realised that the Pi only works with NVMe drives - I accidentally bought a SATA drive to start with (still M2 factor, but not NVMe) and it took me a while to figure out why it wasn't working. This isn't any fault of the HatDrive, but something to be aware of in general when buying drives for the Pi.
Overall, with the above in mind and now having some experience installing it, I wouldn't hesistate to buy this again for a future project.”
“My favorite attachment for Rpi, allows you to connect high quality SSDs.
What I love most about it is that it fits perfectly on the pi with the official Raspberry Pi active cooler, and it looks great.”
“Had to puzzle out how the HAT fits when the Pi 5 is in the official case. as there were no instructions. Fitted and in service with a Crucial P310 1TB M.2 SSD. This is a 2230 unit. The OS transferred easily using the inbuiltutility.”
“One of the most boring purchases I have done recently. The hat fits perfectly, and does it's thing.
I even managed to connect the hat to the Pi with my old thick fingers. The nvme-ssd I had lying around works flawlessly. I copied RaspiOS onto it, and the Pi boots from the ssd as expected.
Conclusion: If you are adventurous and like to spend evenings and weekends trying to get some piece of peculiar hardware to work with your Pi, don't buy this hat.”
