Raspberry Pi going to sleep after big data transfer

General
1

As my title says, I have a Raspberry P 5i in a Pironman 5-MAX case with 2 2Gig NVMes, and I’m booting Open Media Vault on an SD card using it as a NAS. My problem is that whenever I transfer a large file from the SSDs to any PC in my house, my Pi will go to sleep for some reason. I have to push the power button on the case to start it back up again and reboot my Windows 11 PC because it will not reconnect, even though I can connect to the Pi via SSH. I first noticed this because I have a 126GB vid file from Gamers Nexus that is in H.264 that I’m backing up to it.

Has anyone else had an issue like this and fixed it?

By the way, about 4 months ago, I converted the 1 SSD I had and put the 2nd in, and converted the partition from JBOD to a RAID 0

2

Thank you for your detailed report, and we apologize for the delayed reply due to the weekend break.

We take this issue very seriously and have submitted your case to our hardware engineering team for analysis. Based on your description (the problem appeared after switching from a single SSD to RAID 0, and occurs consistently when transferring a large 126 GB file), we suspect it may be a case of transient power supply insufficiency – a borderline condition that only shows up under this specific high‑load scenario.

Please try the following workaround to disable NVMe power management. This often helps by preventing the NVMe drives and PCIe link from entering low‑power states, which can avoid current surges during state transitions.

Edit the kernel command line:sudo nano /boot/firmware/cmdline.txt

Add the following parameters to the end of the same line (separated by spaces):nvme_core.default_ps_max_latency_us=0 pcie_aspm=off pcie_port_pm=off

Save the file and reboot:sudo reboot

Many users have reported that this completely resolves the freeze issue.

If the problem persists, please try the following troubleshooting steps and share the results with us:

  1. Check for PCIe / NVMe errors after a crash
    After the system freezes and you reboot, run this command via SSH:dmesg | grep -i "nvme|pcie|reset" | tail -50 If you see messages like controller is down, CSTS=0xffffffff, or PCIe link down, it confirms a PCIe/power stability issue.
  2. Reduce the load temporarily.Change your RAID 0 back to JBOD or a single‑drive configuration, then retry the same large file transfer.If the problem disappears, it points to dual‑drive high‑load being the trigger.If the problem still occurs, try re‑flashing the system onto a different microSD card (to rule out SD card or OS corruption).
  3. Verify your power supply.Please make sure you are using the official recommended 5V/5A (27 W) USB‑C power supply with a high‑quality cable. A standard 5V/3A power supply (without PD) cannot meet the peak power demands of a Raspberry Pi 5 with two NVMe drives.Let us know how these steps work for you. We will continue to investigate and help you resolve the issue.
3

After I made this post, I updated the Pi’s firmware with sudo rpi-update, and i moved a 92GB file 2 my computer 2 times. The 1st time I copied it to my Windows computer was a success, but the 2nd time crashed at 40%, and the status indicator on the front of the case went from green to red when it happened. I’m using a CanaKit 45W USB-C Power Supply with the Pi and the case, I’m thinking it’s not supplying a consistent 5V to 5.1V that the official Raspberry Pi power supply does. In any case, I’m going to try easy stuff 1st, I’m heading to Microcenter to see if this is the correct voltage works first.

P.S. I implemented the commands that you suggested, and the Pi crashed instantly when I transferred a large file, which in turn made me believe it was a power issue.

4

I just got back home from Microcenter with the official Pi power supply, and sure enough, it did the trick! If I have any more issues, I will let you know via this form. Thanks for the help and for pointing me in the right direction.

5

We’re glad to hear that the issue was resolved after switching to the official Raspberry Pi power supply.Thank you as well for sharing the solution here. This information may help other users who encounter similar symptoms in the future.If you have any other questions or run into any issues, please don’t hesitate to let us know. We’ll be happy to help.