Review on 💾 Geekworm X820 V3.0 USB 3.0 Mobile Hard Disk Module - Storage Expansion Board for Raspberry Pi 3 B+/3B with 2.5 Inch SATA HDD/SSD Support by Michael Bryan

I bought a Geekworm case and HD board for my Raspberry Pi 3 plus with the intention of running the Pi with an SSD instead of an SD card. Of the two products I found, this seemed to be the best since I already had the HD. After receiving the details, I assembled the system and downloaded NOOBS to choose from multiple operating systems. This rating applies to the expansion board only. While this is a good idea, it is not intended for the Pi 3 plus due to the additional power requirements that the 3 plus requires. The board only supplies 2 amps to the Pi. This happens when you use the included power jumper to the GPIO pins or the included micro USB cable. I ended up using my Pi power supply in combination with a 4 amp power supply I bought. The GPIO power jumper has the same connector on both ends, so the I/O pin end repels the pins. There are no instructions either, but they give you a website with instructions. These instructions are not entirely accurate and not entirely clear, so the BOMs need to be finalized. You really have to study them to find out about the jumper on the board. The biggest problem is that while the system has a power button, it doesn't do a graceful shutdown of the PI. Even using a 4 amp power supply I couldn't get a 0.5 amp hard drive to work. This means none of my small SSD drives worked and I had to switch to a physical HDD that drew less than 0.5 amps to work. As with this case, it's a good idea, but it doesn't take much to turn the design into a useful product. I need to return both the expansion card and the case.