The Raspberry Pi 4 has 2 USB 3 port which can take advantage of the speed of this device. The important thing is that it is much faster than the micro SDHC card that usually hosts the OS (and everything else, for most people). Putting the OS on an NVMe has a speed advantage. The NVMe can also have much greater capacity and can be rewritten many more times before failing.
An bootable image that can be found on the Raspberry Pi OS download site (under other images), lets you change the default boot device to USB from micro SHDC. The microSDHC will still be used if no bootable USB device if found, but I leave mine empty.
Moving the bootable image wasn't hard to do on a separate Linux machine. I just copied the micro SDHC with the dd command, then used parted and resizefs to adjust the partition and file system sizes respectively. It is also worth doing an fsck, especially if, like me, you are replacing the uSDHC because it was no longer writeable and the file system is likely to have some anomalies.
A caution is that device requires power from the Raspberry Pi, which doesn't have much. Having a few other things plugged in, I noticed the dreaded "Undervoltage detected" messages on the system console, so I had to use a USB hub to power the other devices while leaving the NVMe plugged into the other Pi USB port.
Result is that there is a notable increase in responsiveness of the system, and I expect that it will last through many more write cycles than a micro SDHC>=,
| Global Trade Identification Number | 06957303895410 |
|---|---|
| Manufacturer | Ugreen Group Limited |
| Model | 90541 |
| Part Number | 90541 |
| RAM | 8 TB |
| Flash memory installed size | 2 TB |
| Digital Storage Capacity | 8 TB |
| Batteries included | No |
| Batteries Required | No |
| Type of cable or wire | USB |
| Material Type | Aluminum |
| Includes rechargable battery | No |
| Item model number | 90541 |
| Product Dimensions | 12.2 x 4.2 x 1.4 cm; 139 g |
| ASIN | B09T97Z7DM |
