1. Confirm what’s being used for root

Run this on your Jetson:

df -h /

You’ll see something like:

Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on

/dev/mmcblk0p1  119G   42G   77G  36% /

→ This means / (your main OS root) is the microSD card, not the NVMe.

Now check whether NVMe is visible:

lsblk

Output example:

NAME         MAJ:MIN RM  SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS

mmcblk0      179:0    0  119G  0 disk 

└─mmcblk0p1  179:1    0  118G  0 part /

nvme0n1      259:0    0  465G  0 disk 

If nvme0n1 appears with no “MOUNTPOINT” listed, it’s just sitting idle — recognized, but not being used by the OS.

2. Check if the NVMe is mounted anywhere

Run:

df -h | grep nvme

If it returns nothing → the NVMe isn’t mounted yet.

3. Use the NVMe as extra storage (recommended, safe)

You can easily use the SSD for data, Docker, ROS workspaces, etc.
Here’s the safe and fast setup:

# Create partition + format

sudo parted /dev/nvme0n1 -- mklabel gpt

sudo parted -a opt /dev/nvme0n1 mkpart primary ext4 0% 100%

sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/nvme0n1p1 -L jetson_ssd

# Create mount point and mount

sudo mkdir -p /mnt/ssd

sudo mount /dev/nvme0n1p1 /mnt/ssd

# Make it permanent

sudo blkid /dev/nvme0n1p1

# copy the UUID from output and edit fstab

sudo nano /etc/fstab

Add a line like:

UUID=<your-uuid> /mnt/ssd ext4 defaults 0 2

Then:

sudo mount -a

Now you can store things there:

cd /mnt/ssd

mkdir projects data

4. (Optional) Move heavy data to NVMe

You can move large folders or services onto the SSD and symlink back:

sudo systemctl stop docker

sudo mv /var/lib/docker /mnt/ssd/docker

sudo ln -s /mnt/ssd/docker /var/lib/docker

sudo systemctl start docker