I have an RPi5B 16GB and 512GB NvME SSD and am interested in reducing the OFF state RPi power consumption as explained in: Reducing Raspberry Pi 5's power consumption by 140x | Jeff Geerling. What danger to my NvME SSD is there in setting POWER_OFF_ON_HALT=1, please?
Hi @Brian298034
You should have no issues with your NVMe drive while using that power option assuming that you shutdown the device rather than having the power suddenly not be available (blackout or pulling the plug).
It is safe to enable POWER_OFF_ON_HALT=1 if:
- You always shut down cleanly
- You use a robust filesystem
- Your SSD isn’t a super-cheap generic brand
Thank you for the replies. My SSD is the B/win Storage Company P/L brand supplied by Core and shown at https://core-electronics.com.au/raspberry-pi-placeholder-4.html with red and white Raspberry Pi marking. In both replies, by implication, the setting can cause problems if the power is suddenly removed. Are the problems limited to corruption of the SSD data or do they involve hardware damage including eePROMs, please?
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Hey @Brian298034
The potential risks when power is suddenly lost (e.g., unplugging or a blackout) are generally limited to data corruption, especially if the drive was in the middle of a write operation. Modern SSDs have firmware and wear-levelling mechanisms that may delay writes or cache data temporarily, so abrupt shutdowns can sometimes cause filesystem issues or corruption of in-flight data.
However, hardware damage, including to the drive’s onboard controller or any EEPROMs, is extremely unlikely under normal usage. SSDs, even budget ones, are generally designed to tolerate unexpected power loss occasionally. That said, enterprise-grade or name-brand SSDs often have better protections (e.g., power-loss protection capacitors), while cheaper ones may not.
