SD cards are the weak spot of any always-on board. Orange Pi's images include the installer to move off them: nand-sata-install (inherited from Armbian).
What it does
It copies the root filesystem of the running system from the SD card to another device and adjusts the boot setup. Depending on what it detects, it offers:
| Menu option | Bootloader | System |
|---|---|---|
| Boot from SD – system on SATA, USB or NVMe | stays on SD | on the disk |
| Boot from eMMC – system on eMMC | eMMC | eMMC |
| Boot from eMMC – system on SATA, USB or NVMe | eMMC | on the disk |
| Boot from SPI – system on SATA, USB or NVMe | SPI flash | on the disk |
The last option is the one you want for an SD-card-free NVMe setup: the bootloader lives in the board's SPI NOR flash and the whole system on the SSD.
Which boards
orangepi-build marks SPI boot support (BOOT_SUPPORT_SPI="yes") in the board configs of the Orange Pi 5, 5 Plus, 5 Max, 5 Pro and 3B. The product pages list SPI NOR flash on the 5 (16 MB), 5B (16 MB), 5 Plus (16/32 MB), 5 Max (16 MB) and 3B (16/32 MB).
Orange Pi 5 Pro caveat: its SPI flash is empty by default, and the product page says it's either the eMMC socket or the on-board SPI flash. Check which your board has before planning SPI boot.
Procedure
- Boot from a fresh Orange Pi image on an SD card, with the NVMe SSD installed.
- Update the system, then run:
sudo nand-sata-install - Choose Boot from SPI – system on SATA, USB or NVMe, select the NVMe device, confirm, and let it finish.
- Power off, remove the SD card, power on.
Pitfalls
- The installer erases the target disk. Back up the SSD first.
- Keep a spare SD card with a working image: if the SPI bootloader or the SSD install fails, booting from SD is the recovery path.
- Use a power supply that meets the board's spec; an NVMe SSD adds to the load (see the power supply item).