By Little add-on boards that fit over the tiny computer are sold by Raspberry Pi. We refer to this type of board as a hat. Excuse me, but HAT stands for “hardware on top.” Come on, that is so incredibly cute. In any case, the most recent one is an add-on M.2 slot that is only slightly larger than the smallest conventional drive, which is 2230 and 30 mm long. It is identical to the one found in a Steam Deck.
An M.2 HAT board for somewhat larger 42mm SSDs was already available for Raspberry Pi, but this one was a more radical extension. This one is sufficiently small to screw down and plug in below the height of the Pi’s numerous connections. This implies you can place the M.2 HAT inside a Pi case, specifically the official case that the Raspberry Pi company sells (the cutout is for the fan module). Still, it should work with many other cases as well, provided there aren’t any other significant improvements to the Pi 5.
According to Liliputing, the Compact version of the HAT+ board is simple to incorporate into most designs because it fits into the same FPC connection on the Pi 5. Additionally, although 30mm M.2 drives are usually more expensive than other solutions, they should be a quick and easy way to acquire a significant amount of additional storage. The updated HAT is currently available for purchase from several vendors.
