Hi
I recently upgraded from a slow samsung Micro SD card to a fast 128gb NVMe SSD to boot my OS on my Pironman 5 case. I have configured my RaspberryPi 5 to prioritize NVMe boot over sd card. The boot time and overall system speeds increased a lot after forcing my Raspberry pi 5 to gen 3 speeds to properly utilize my SSD, but the shutdown time got painfully slow, taking roughly 30-60 seconds to power off. i did notice one thing. if I have any sd card connected in the sd card extender slot, the shutdown time reach to original 1-3 seconds. but when kept empty, its just slow.
Take it like this:
SD card present = Fast shutdown time
SD card not present = Slow shutdown time
Any ideas on how can i make my shutdown time faster while keeping my sd card slot completely empty?
Thank you for your post. Since your system is booting from the NVMe SSD, the shutdown process itself does not require the SD card.
From your description, this may be related to how Raspberry Pi OS handles the SD/MMC interface. When an SD card is inserted, the system detects it normally. When the slot is empty, some device or service may be waiting for the SD/MMC interface to respond or time out during shutdown, causing an extra 30–60 second delay.
Please perform a slow shutdown with no SD card inserted, then reboot and run:
journalctl -b -1 | grep -iE "mmc|sdhci|timeout|stop job|failed"
Please send us the output. This will help us identify exactly what the system is waiting for during shutdown, and we can then look for a way to configure the system to shut down quickly even without an SD card inserted.
Hi,
Here is the journal output:
Aug 17 20:17:01 RaspberryPi-5 kernel: sdhci-brcmstb 1000fff000.mmc: Got CD GPIO
Aug 17 20:17:01 RaspberryPi-5 kernel: mmc1: CQHCI version 5.10
Aug 17 20:17:01 RaspberryPi-5 kernel: mmc0: CQHCI version 5.10
Aug 17 20:17:01 RaspberryPi-5 kernel: mmc0: SDHCI controller on 1000fff000.mmc [1000fff000.mmc] using ADMA 64-bit
Aug 17 20:17:01 RaspberryPi-5 kernel: mmc1: SDHCI controller on 1001100000.mmc [1001100000.mmc] using ADMA 64-bit
here is the screenshot of the terminal output:
From the logs you provided, we did not find any obvious errors related to the Pironman 5. The mmc0/mmc1 entries are standard kernel initialisation messages for the SD/MMC controller.
Since the shutdown delay only occurs when no SD card is inserted, we would like to check whether the system still has any leftover mount configurations referencing the SD card.
Please run the following command and send us the full output:
cat /etc/fstab
If there are no SD‑card‑related entries in fstab, and all other Pironman 5 functions are working normally, then the 30–60 second shutdown delay is likely caused by the operating system waiting for a device or system service to time out during shutdown – rather than an issue with the Pironman 5 itself.
Here is the output of the terminal.
i actually did some research and found out that in the line “Aug 17 20:17:01 RaspberryPi-5 kernel: sdhci-brcmstb 1000fff000.mmc: Got CD GPIO”, you can see that it says “Got CD GPIO”, which means that the raspberry pi 5 is actually detecting a physical sd card connected. but there is nothing connected, except the sd card extender.
what i think is the issue is that the sd card extender is actually making the rspberry pi firmware think that there is an sd card connected, as the raspberry pi 5 actually has a switch kind of mechanism in the sd card slot that closes when we insert an sd card. so i guess thats what is causing the issue. it is trying to unmount a sd card that it is falsely detecting during the shutdown, causing a delay. i have attached photos for better understanding.
i guess there is no hardware issue here. everything is working fine. do you have an software/ firmware fix so that i can disable the sd card detect completely and improve boot speeds?
We have reproduced the issue and confirmed that the shutdown delay is caused by the SD card extension board being connected, even when no SD card is inserted.
We also tested the available software configuration options, but they did not resolve the issue. As a temporary workaround, if your system boots entirely from the NVMe SSD and you do not need the SD card slot, please disconnect the SD card extension board. This will restore the normal shutdown time.
Thank you for verifying the root cause and clarifying things up.
As a temporary workaround, disconnecting the extension board is unfortunately not physically viable. The Pironman 5 standoffs are slightly shorter to accommodate the exact thickness of the sd card extender. Removing the board causes the Pi 5 to sit un-level, creating a physical flex across the board after tightening the mounting screws. I can get it done by replacing the standoffs or use spacers. Furthermore, i still require the slot for occasional secondary OS testing.
Since a software fix isn’t available yet, i will stick with my current setup and i would either bare with the shutdown time, or insert a cheap sd card into the slot for faster shutdown.
Thanks.
Thank you for confirming the root cause with us and for the feedback. A software-side fix is still under evaluation, and we will keep an eye on this issue in future updates. The workaround you mentioned — inserting an SD card into the slot — is indeed a viable temporary solution, and replacing the standoffs or adding spacers would also work.
If anything new comes up or you need further assistance, please feel free to reach out to us on the forum or by email anytime.
Thank you for the update and for taking these mechanical workarounds with the engineering team. Eagerly waiting for a software patch to fix the slow boot soon.
Thank you for the continued support and for the highly responsive assistance regarding my issue.
Good afternoon
I have just returned from Thailand and was catching up with the latest SunFounder news when I spotted this post: this is exactly the same situation I find myself in, and I have been trying for 10 months to understand why there is such a long delay of up to a minute! Thank you for reassuring me that there is nothing wrong with my setup.
Obviously this is a problem that needs to be fixed because, even though a lot of us boot directly from NVMe, we absolutely want the SD card slot available without having to mess around with reconnecting it.
The SunFounder team are amazing, and they have responded extremely quickly and positively to all genuine issues [like this one] where switched-on users provide credible and reproduce-able fault conditions.
@OpenLoop I am also jealous of you being able to get gen 3 speed; being a 5 Max, I am stuck with gen 2, so it was silly of me to not properly read the spec before I bought a dual-port that I will probably never use!
I look forward to a SW fix to this soon.
Best wishes, Nick
Hi Nick
@gauge_boson I am glad that this post helped you identify the root cause and reassuring that that your pironman 5 max setup has nothing wrong. I am too eagerly waiting for a software fix for faster shutdown speeds.
Regarding the slow gen 2 speeds on the pironman 5 max, this is indeed due to the dual nvme slot extension board. The splitter chip has to split the bandwidth for two nvme slots, which cannot support gen 3 speeds. I have personally never tested the pironman 5 max, so I genuinely dont know the actual issue, but this one seems to be the most obvious one. This is the exact reason I didnt consider the pironman 5 max. But the max is great when you want more storage or want to use the hailo AI acceleration module. you could try dropping out your ssd brand name and model to check compatibility and see if sunfounder or the community has a workaround for it.
Thanks.
Thank you for your reply.
I have the 2TB Samsung 990 PRO PCIe 4.0 which I know is well over-specified for this. I was looking to the future, and the price was a lot cheaper when I bought it.
Best regards
Nick
That ssd is completely compatible with pironman 5 series case. I dont think you will be able to get gen 3 speeds, as the pironman 5 max hardware itself is limiting the gen 3 speeds. But yes, much more faster than the sd card.
In fairness, the latest documentation does emphasise the speed limitation; I mainly use this as my home office machine, so it is plenty fast enough for what I need.
When a fix is found for the empty SD slot causing delays, I will be a very happy man 
1 Like
I have just read this related post: https://forum.sunfounder.com/t/extra-delay-to-shutdown-reboot/1235
It looks like a known issue that has been unsolved in over 2 years and numerous updates to the SD extender board.
Thank you for your kind words and trust! We have shared the mechanical workarounds and the software fix request — including feedback from you and other users — with our engineering team, and the software-side fix is currently under evaluation. As soon as there is any progress (an evaluation result or a patch release), we will notify you in the forum thread right away. If you have any other questions, please feel free to reach out to us anytime.
I did read that before starting this topic, hoping that they would have a fix. they couldnt find a solution to it as the root cause was unknown.
