InstallingOSOnNVMe-OrangePi.md

Booting Orange Pi 5 from NVMe SSD – Unixorn guide

✅ Step‑by‑step guide

1. Boot from microSD

• Flash the official Orange Pi Ubuntu/Debian image (or Armbian) to an SD card.
• Insert that card and the NVMe, then boot your board.

2. Flash SPI bootloader

• Run:

  • For Orange Pi Ubuntu:

    sudo orangepi-config

    → “Boot Options” → “Install/Update the bootloader on SPI Flash” (Reddit)

  • For Armbian:

    sudo armbian-config

    → System → “Install/Update bootloader on MTD Flash” (Reddit)

This flashes rkspi_loader.img into /dev/mtdblock0, enabling NVMe boot support.

3. Mirror OS to NVMe

• Again on your PC (or via SD‑booted shell), use:

  sudo dd if=/dev/mmcblkX of=/dev/nvme0n1 bs=4M status=progress && sync

  This copies the entire SD system to the NVMe. (unixorn.github.io, Reddit)

• Note: you can find your NVMe by:

lsblk
sudo fdisk -l

4. Power off and remove SD card

• After shutdown (sudo poweroff), pull the SD card.

5. Boot from NVMe

• Power back up. The board should boot from NVMe.
• The first boot can take a bit because the filesystem may automatically resize. (unixorn.github.io)