**The new Raspberry Pi bootloader is out which makes these instructions only necessary if you want to continue to use the SD card as a bootloader. View the Raspberry Pi Bootloader Configuration Guide here!**
The Raspberry Pi 4* is finally here and has a lot of exciting changes. One very major downside is that it doesn’t support true USB booting yet out of the box (like the 3 series did). The Raspberry Pi foundation states that it is being worked on and will be added back with a future update. No timeline has been given yet for that to happen but they state it’s one of their top priorities.
Most of my projects heavily depend on having good performing storage so sitting and waiting was not an acceptable solution. In this guide I’ll show you a workaround to use USB devices as your rootfs device and use a Micro SD card as bootloader only which gives us full SSD performance after boot! To see exactly how much of a performance difference this makes (spoiler: it’s gigantic) check out the Raspberry Pi Storage Benchmarks.
I highly recommend doing this on a completely new install. If you try to upgrade your old ones and something goes wrong there’s a good chance you might lose data. We will be modifying the boot partition, resizing partitions, etc. so don’t use a drive with any data on it unless you are positive you have all of the steps down!
Compatible USB Adapters
The Raspberry Pi 4 is proving to be picky about what SATA, M.2, etc. adapters will work in the USB 3.0 port. The USB 3.0 ports are the ones in the middle that are blue inside. The black ones are USB 2.0 and won’t give you the faster speeds the new Pi offers.
It’s very likely that some of these will be fixed via software and firmware updates and the Raspberry Pi Foundation has several open known issues related to USB 3. Until that happens though I will maintain a list here of known working ones and known problematic ones. It’s still very early in the release of the Pi 4 so we still have a lot to learn about which adapters work / don’t work. If you have working and nonworking adapters leave a comment and I’ll add it in this list.
If the adapters worked before on older Pis then one thing you can try is putting them in the black USB 2.0 ports. Obviously this is stupid because we all want the Pi 4 performance gains but if you end up needing to buy a new adapter this will give you a workaround until a replacement arrives!
Find USB adapter chipset
There are certain chipsets used in adapters that are known to be working/not working.
pi@raspberrypi:~ $ lsusb Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 002 Device 002: ID 174c:55aa ASMedia Technology Inc. Name: ASM1051E SATA 6Gb/s bridge, ASM1053E SATA 6Gb/s bridge, ASM1153 SATA 3Gb/s bridge, ASM1153E SATA 6Gb/s bridge Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub Bus 001 Device 002: ID 2109:3431 VIA Labs, Inc. Hub Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
This is a lsusb dump of all my connected USB devices. I have bolded the line with the USB bridge device. We can see that the chipset is ASM1153E. This is a really common one that works well with the Pi.
The new USB-C 3.1 Type A version of the Sabrent adapter is reported as working in the comments by UEF. DO NOT get the USB 3.0 version as that one is below on the naughty list and won’t work!
Make absolutely sure it’s the 10Gbps USB 3.1 Gen 2 version. There is another one that looks identical that is a USB 3.1 Gen 2 6Gbps that will not work. Confirmed working by RRT in the comments.
It’s bold. It’s beautiful. It’s also confirmed working by TADRACKET and Steve B. However, be warned, it takes a *lot* of power! Steve B. reports that even with the oversized 3.5A CanaKit adapter* it does not work. If you have the standard 3.0 adapter you can be practically certain it won’t power this enclosure. Does work with a powered USB hub*.
Returning legendary commentary Frank Meyer reports: Does not work with a 3.0A power adapter (also reported by TTE). It’s not enough power for this enclosure. Does work with a powered USB hub*.
M.Yusuf has given the first ever report of a working Orico adapter! Make sure it’s the USB 3.1 Gen 2 version that says “Support UASP for NVMe SSD”. This is the way.
Canakit has been making very reliable power supplies for several Pi generations now. Using a 3.5A power supply will give enough extra power for your Pi to power the drive without causing instability
Reported as working by JeffG but with an ugly messy appearance
Known Working Adapters
Known Problematic Adapters (Naughty List)
Here is a list of common USB adapters that are known to have problems with the Raspberry Pi 4. You can get some of these adapters working by using quirks mode (see the “Fix (some) USB Adapter Problems Using Quirks” section below).
Only works in the USB 2.0 ports. Will not boot in a USB 3.0 port. I have two of these and can confirm they don’t work. RIP to Sabrent, our previous king of the Pi 3 era of adapters.
Despite earlier reports as working Ryan and one other have reported this adapter does not work unless you enable quirks mode! Don’t make Ryan’s sacrifice in vain and avoid this one.
Extremely cheap adapter from AliExpress — MADATALIEXPRESS bought 5 of them and none worked, PPCM had one working, very unreliable and slow when it does work, not recommended even if you get lucky!
The Samsung 980 Pro (NVMe) is a professional grade SSD and one of the fastest in the world. The Samsung NVMe drives have been at the top of this category for a long time and are well trusted for both their performance and reliability / long life.
The ICY BOX is basically a giant heatsink that you mount a high performance M.2 NVMe drive inside of. This enclosure is really fast but requires a powered USB hub. Not even the 3.5A adapter can reliably power it! The enclosure works well and will physically feel warm to the touch as it is pulling the heat off your NVMe drive!
The Kingston A400 has been a great drive to use with the Pi for years. It’s reliable, widely available around the world, has low power requirements and performs very well. It’s also very affordable. This drive has been benchmarked over 1000 times at pibenchmarks.com and is the #1 most popular SSD among the Pi community!
The SanDisk Extreme Pro USB SSD is a true solid state drive. This is different than a typical “flash drive” which uses extremely cheap memory and has very low random I/O performance/throughput compared to a real solid state drive. I’ve used both the USB 3.1 and USB 3.2 variants with the Pi successfully and they benchmark very well!
You may use other types of drives with the Pi such as M.2 SATA to USB 3.0 and m-SATA to USB 3.0. Here’s some adapters I’ve used for those types of drives:
VL716 mSATA Enclosure
The VL716 mSATA enclosure lets you connect micro SATA drives to the Pi. These drives are an older type of SSD (usually seen in laptops) predating the M.2 slot but are still widely available and perform extremely well!
The UGREEN M+B enclosure is a great enclosure for the Pi for M.2 SATA 2280 NGFF drives. It supports both B-key and M-key drives. Does not support newer NVMe drives. As with other types of enclosures it requires more power than other options!
The Argon ONE M.2 is a M.2 SATA Pi 4 case / storage solution. With the case and M.2 SATA expansion board you can completely enclosure your Pi 4 and have a built in M.2 slot! The M.2 SATA board is sometimes sold separately from the case itself and can be used as well. Does not support NVMe, this is for SATA M.2 drives only!
Power can be a serious problem with these drives. We are learning from the comments that you are especially likely to run into power issues with NVMe enclosures. A powered USB hub or a power adapter that puts out 3.5A comes not only just strongly recommended, it may actually be required that you choose one option or the other for your drive to function.
The specific requirements of how much power you’ll need depend on the adapter/enclosure and the model of your drive itself. As a very rough guideline, older models of drives tend to use more power than newer models of drives. 3.5″ form factor drives also use more power than 2.5″ drives. The earliest SSD models like first and second generation models are also well understood to use significantly more power than newer models. This is due to changes and improvements in technology over the years and even using different more efficient memory like 3D NAND. Some super high end performance drives will consume more power as well.
Here’s the current recommendations based on everyone’s comments combined with stuff I’ve personally used with the Pi:
CanaKit 3.5A Power Adapter
The CanaKit 3.5A adapter has an extra half an amp (500 mA) of capacity to give some breathing room to your accessories. This is bigger than the official Pi power supply which provides 3.0A.
The Sabrent powered USB hub delivers a whopping 2.5A of dedicated power for your USB attached devices. This is almost as much as the Pi adapter itself is rated for (3.0A). It will easily power the most thirsty of setups such as NVMe enclosures.
Note: Make sure Amazon doesn’t try to take you to the non-powered version and that it’s the one with the AC adapter that plugs in to provide extra power
Fixing (some) USB Adapter Problems Using Quirks
Some of the very common adapters on the naughty list above (such as the Sabrent) can be made to work by using USB quirks to disable UAS mode on the drive. This lowers performance, but it’s still much faster than a SD card and your adapter won’t go to waste.
To find out the quirks we need to find the device ID string for your adapter and then add an entry to cmdline.txt telling the kernel to apply them on boot.
Find Your Adapter
To apply the quirks we first need to get the adapter id. We will use the sudo lsusb command:
$ sudo lsusb
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 174c:55aa ASMedia Technology Inc. Name: ASM1051E SATA 6Gb/s bridge, ASM1053E SATA 6Gb/s bridge, ASM1153 SATA 3Gb/s bridge, ASM1153E SATA 6Gb/s bridge
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 2109:3431 VIA Labs, Inc. Hub
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
On line 2 we can see my ASM1051E SATA 6Gb/s bridge adapter (it’s the known working StarTech.com 2.5″ SATA to USB adapter*). You will see something very similar to mine when you run the command and it shouldn’t be too hard to figure out which device it is. If you need more information add a -v switch to make the command sudo lsusb -v. This can sometimes add some additional details to make it easier to figure out which one is your adapter.
If you’re still not sure, we have another command that between the two that can narrow things down. Type / paste the following:
sudo dmesg | grep usb
[ 0.828535] usb usb3: New USB device found, idVendor=1d6b, idProduct=0002, bcdDevice= 4.19
[ 0.828568] usb usb3: New USB device strings: Mfr=3, Product=2, SerialNumber=1
[ 0.828597] usb usb3: Product: DWC OTG Controller
[ 0.828620] usb usb3: Manufacturer: Linux 4.19.75-v7l+ dwc_otg_hcd
[ 0.828644] usb usb3: SerialNumber: fe980000.usb
[ 0.830051] usbcore: registered new interface driver uas
[ 0.830182] usbcore: registered new interface driver usb-storage
[ 0.836488] usbcore: registered new interface driver usbhid
[ 0.836511] usbhid: USB HID core driver
[ 0.971598] usb 1-1: new high-speed USB device number 2 using xhci_hcd
[ 1.154217] usb 1-1: New USB device found, idVendor=2109, idProduct=3431, bcdDevice= 4.20
[ 1.154254] usb 1-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=0, Product=1, SerialNumber=0
[ 1.154281] usb 1-1: Product: USB2.0 Hub
[ 1.301989] usb 2-1: new SuperSpeed Gen 1 USB device number 2 using xhci_hcd
[ 1.332965] usb 2-1: New USB device found, idVendor=174c, idProduct=55aa, bcdDevice= 1.00
[ 1.332999] usb 2-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=2, Product=3, SerialNumber=1
[ 1.333026] usb 2-1: Product: ASM105x
[ 1.333048] usb 2-1: Manufacturer: ASMT
[ 1.333071] usb 2-1: SerialNumber: 123456789B79F
This is the dmesg log showing the hardware detection as hardware is activated on the Pi. If your log is really long you can generate fresh entries by just unplugging a device and plugging it back in and running the command again. Here we can clearly see that the ASM105x is what our StarTech adapter is being detected as.
Now we can go back to our first lsusb command and we want the 8 characters from the ID field that comes right after the Device:
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 174c:55aa ASMedia Technology Inc. Name: ASM1051E SATA 6Gb/s bridge
Our adapter’s ID is: 174c:55aa
Applying Quirks
To apply the quirks to our USB adapter we are going to edit /boot/cmdline.txt. Type:
sudo nano /boot/cmdline.txt
We are going to add the following entry into the very front of cmdline.txt:
usb-storage.quirks=XXXX:XXXX:u
In place of the X’s above you will put in your adapter’s ID that we got before. With the example commands I gave above mine would look like this: usb-storage.quirks=174c:55aa:u. After this my cmdline.txt looks like this (everything should be one continuous line, no line breaks!):
Now reboot the Pi. If the Pi fails to boot you can plug the SD card into the computer and go to /boot/cmdline.txt and undo the change we did so you can boot back in with your SD card.
Verifying Quirks
Once you have rebooted after changing cmdline.txt we can verify the quirks have been applied by doing another dmesg | grep usb command:
sudo dmesg | grep usb
[ 1.332924] usb 2-1: New USB device found, idVendor=174c, idProduct=55aa, bcdDevice= 1.00
[ 1.332957] usb 2-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=2, Product=3, SerialNumber=1
[ 1.332983] usb 2-1: Product: ASM105x
[ 1.333006] usb 2-1: Manufacturer: ASMT
[ 1.333028] usb 2-1: SerialNumber: 123456789B79F
[ 1.335967] usb 2-1: UAS is blacklisted for this device, using usb-storage instead
[ 1.336071] usb 2-1: UAS is blacklisted for this device, using usb-storage instead
[ 1.336103] usb-storage 2-1:1.0: USB Mass Storage device detected
[ 1.336479] usb-storage 2-1:1.0: Quirks match for vid 174c pid 55aa: c00000
[ 1.336611] scsi host0: usb-storage 2-1:1.0
This time we can see in dmesg that UAS was blacklisted for the device and it has loaded with the usb-storage driver instead. This driver tends to be more compatible with the “problematic adapters” but the performance is usually significantly lower. It’s definitely worth a try though as some adapters do better with the quirks performance-wise. The only way to know for sure is to run a benchmark (see storage benchmark section near the end).
USB Boot Instructions
There are a lot of steps to follow to set everything up properly. If you make a mistake the first time don’t spend too much time trying to correct it or figure out what you did wrong. It’s usually faster to burn the images again and reconfigure again rather than try to figure out which step you might have made a typo on. It’s much easier the second time!
Note: Don’t attempt to use raw dd commands to write the images. Too many silly things can go wrong that are checked for/fixed by the recommended programs. Do yourself a big favor and use one of the recommends to avoid spending a ton of time troubleshooting basic imaging problems!
Preparing SSD
We are going to burn a second identical copy of Raspbian to the SSD. This ensures everything the Pi needs to boot is there so we can use the SD card as a bootloader but our actual system will be on our nice fast SSD drive.
Note: Make sure you create the empty file named “ssh” on the boot partition of both drives if you are headless or don’t have a mouse/keyboard attached so you can ssh in on the first boot.
First Boot (SD card only, SSD unplugged)
Insert your freshly imaged SD card into the Pi and connect the power. Sign into the Pi for the first time.
Don’t do an apt-get upgrade/dist-upgrade or any additional configuration yet. Just stick with the instructions until we have finished configuration (especially since if something goes wrong you may have to start over and any other setup you did will be lost).
Once the Pi has finished booting and you have signed in for the first time plug in your SSD to your Pi’s USB 3.0 ports. The USB 3.0 ports are the ones that have the blue plastic inside instead of the black plastic (the black ones are USB 2.0 ports).
Change PARTUUID
We need to change the PARTUUID of our SSD’s partitions so the Pi doesn’t get confused about what device to boot from. Right now the partitions on both the SD card and the SSD are an exact match and we need them to be different so we can tell the Pi to boot specifically from our SSD’s partition.
We are going to use fdisk to change the SSD’s PARTUUID to the hexadecimal d34db33f to make our SSD easy to identify. Use the following:
$ sudo fdisk /dev/sda
Welcome to fdisk (util-linux 2.33.1).
Changes will remain in memory only, until you decide to write them.
Be careful before using the write command.
Command (m for help): p
Disk /dev/sda: 238.5 GiB, 256060514304 bytes, 500118192 sectors
Disk model: ASM105x
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x6c586e13
Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type
/dev/sda1 8192 532479 524288 256M c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/sda2 532480 500118191 499585712 238.2G 83 Linux
Command (m for help): x
Expert command (m for help): i
Enter the new disk identifier: 0xd34db33f
Disk identifier changed from 0x6c586e13 to 0xd34db33f.
Expert command (m for help): r
Command (m for help): w
The partition table has been altered.
Syncing disks.
Your /dev/mmcblk0 and /dev/sda devices should now be different from each other. The SD card’s ID is 6c586e13 and the SSD’s PARTUUID is now
Update /boot/cmdline.txt
We are going to change cmdline.txt to point to the SSD for booting instead of the SD card. First make a backup of your existing cmdline.txt file with the following command:
sudo cp /boot/cmdline.txt /boot/cmdline.txt.bak
We’ve now created a backup you can restore if something goes wrong. If you need to restore your backup plug the SD card into a computer/device and replace cmdline.txt with cmdline.txt.bak that we made above. Now your Pi should boot normally again.
Open up /boot/cmdline.txt using nano or your favorite text editor:
Make the change and double check the line is what it should be,then press Ctrl+X to save our changes.
Note: cmdline.txt should be one long solid line with no breaks — don’t add any line breaks or the system won’t boot and you’ll need to restore the backup we made earlier!
Test SSD
We are now ready to test booting from the SSD. Restart your Pi by issuing a
sudo reboot
The first boot with your SSD can be slow due to running fsck on the drive. If you have a really large SSD it can take surprisingly long to check all that space. Once the check completes it will mark the drive clean and skip the disk check from now on. It can take over a minute or two sometimes for really big drives so give it at least that much time before assuming it didn’t work.
After signing in we can verify that the SSD is being used like this:
$ findmnt -n -o SOURCE /
/dev/sda2
Verify that partition has switched over as shown below to /dev/sda2 (SSD) instead of /dev/mmcblk0p2 (SD card).
Update /etc/fstab
We are now ready to edit the /etc/fstab file to point to our updated drive. To edit the file type:
We want to change the root ( / ) partition (PARTUUID ending with -02) to load our SSD’s PARTUUID instead of the SD card. Replace the 2nd partition’s PARTUUID field on the last line in the file with the d34db33f label we applied earlier with fdisk. After making the change my /etc/fstab file looks like this:
Press Ctrl+X to tell nano to save our changes. Now type sudo reboot to restart the Pi.
Note: We want to leave the first partition (/boot) on the SD card. If you change this to the SSD then apt will update your SSD instead of the SD card so they won’t be used during boot! Remember that we are using the SD card as a bootloader and that is why the firmware updates (such as start.elf, etc) should go there instead of the SSD’s boot partition (which is never used).
Resizing Filesystem
By default the partition on the SSD / Flash drive will only be 1.8G. The Pi expands this automatically on micro SD drives but we will need to do it ourselves for a SSD / Flash drive. To do this we need to expand the partition and then resize the file system.
First let’s open fdisk and print the partitions:
pi@raspberrypi:~ $ sudo fdisk /dev/sda
Welcome to fdisk (util-linux 2.33.1).
Changes will remain in memory only, until you decide to write them.
Be careful before using the write command.
Command (m for help): p
Disk /dev/sda: 238.5 GiB, 256060514304 bytes, 500118192 sectors
Disk model: ASM105x
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0xd34db33f
Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type
/dev/sda1 8192 532479 524288 256M c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/sda2 532480 4390911 3858432 1.9G 83 Linux
There is the line we need. Our start value for /dev/sda2 (rootfs) is 532480. Next we need to remove and recreate the partition as a larger size.
If you make any mistakes during this command just close fdisk by pressing q. The changes won’t be written to disk. If you mess up any of the commands the drive will no longer boot and you’ll have to start over again so be careful!
Command (m for help): d
Partition number (1,2, default 2): 2
Partition 2 has been deleted.
Command (m for help): n
Partition type
p primary (1 primary, 0 extended, 3 free)
e extended (container for logical partitions)
Select (default p): p
Partition number (2-4, default 2): 2
First sector (2048-500118191, default 2048): 532480
Last sector, +/-sectors or +/-size{K,M,G,T,P} (532480-500118191, default 500118191): 500118191
Created a new partition 2 of type 'Linux' and of size 238.2 GiB.
Partition #2 contains a ext4 signature.
Do you want to remove the signature? [Y]es/[N]o: N
Command (m for help): w
The partition table has been altered.
Syncing disks.
If everything went well then type “w” and press enter. Otherwise press “q” to quit and try again. Once you enter “w” the changes will be permanently written to disk!
Now reboot the system. Type “df -h” to view the current disk:
We can see our disk is still 1.8G even after resizing the partition. That’s because we still have one more step! We need to resize the filesystem to fill our new partition space. For this we will use “sudo resize2fs /dev/sda2”:
sudo resize2fs /dev/sda2
resize2fs 1.44.5 (15-Dec-2018)
Filesystem at /dev/sda2 is mounted on /; on-line resizing required
old_desc_blocks = 1, new_desc_blocks = 15
The filesystem on /dev/sda2 is now 62448214 (4k) blocks long.
And that’s it! You will now be using all of your space on your drive.
Verify SSD Functionality / Performance
You can make sure everything is running correctly (and as fast as it should be) by running my quick storage benchmark. You can run the benchmark with the following one-liner:
This will give you a score you can compare to the other Raspberry Pi Storage Benchmark results and make sure that you are getting an equivalent speed to your peers with the same device!
Update Pi using apt
Now that we’ve updated fstab it is safe (and highly recommended) to update your Pi’s software. Type “sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade” to update the system and firmware.
Your system will now be running completely from your USB drive! To verify this, run the command “findmnt -n -o SOURCE” / to ensure your root partition has switched over as shown below to /dev/sda2 instead of /dev/mmcblk0p2.
Conclusion
The Samsung 950 Pro NVMe drive in the featured picture scored a 9189 on the Raspberry Pi Storage Benchmark. The previous all-time record score on a Pi 3B+ was 3561. The performance gains are very real and very dramatic.
For me getting this performance is well worth having to waste a micro SD card just to be a bootloader. I am largely after the USB 3.0 bus and gigabit ethernet performance improvements and using this method I am able to achieve the performance I was after without waiting an indeterminate amount of time for the feature to be added back in!
Although there are ongoing compatibility issues and we lack the super easy native USB booting support we had before I’m more than willing to go through the growing pains to finally get rid that ancient USB 2.0 bus! Just make sure if you are planning to build a system you plan your adapters and parts accordingly.
Oh wow, a powered SATA adapter! I tried looking for firmware updates for it and found this site (which can’t be the same company).
The main alternative I know of is that most people will use a powered USB hub like the little Sabrent hub. The power levels are very similar between the two. This adapter provides 2.0A and the Sabrent powered USB hub is 2.5A of dedicated power.
The only advantage of doing a setup like that is you could get maximum speeds by not having to use quirks mode. I haven’t seen a powered one that didn’t require quirks mode yet but I’m sure there are probably some out there (there seems to be no limit to how many companies will rebrand and sell a storage adapter).
I think your existing setup sounds pretty good. The quirks mode speed penalty is probably roughly 30%ish for most setups. You can verify this by running the speed test at pibenchmarks.com. You can compare that to people who are running the test using something like a StarTech adapter or one of the ones that works in UASP mode without quirks.
If you are hosting a server or something that requires very fast IO it may be worth doing this with a powered USB hub which will allow you to use any adapter basically (that works). It’s still an order of magnitude faster than any SD card even in quirks mode though (average score with a SD card is probably something like 800-1200, an average SSD is probably 5000-8000).
Just to add before the firmware update I had to have quirks enabled, you have to find the device id using lsusb from another machine or Windows Device Manager. Then edit the /boot/cmdline.txt | add this line to the beginning usb-storage.quirks=152d:1561:u
But since the firmware update seems to work without.
Excellent results! That actually makes sense that it’s not wanting to work without quirks mode. Normally you don’t have to enable TRIM support on supported adapters. My StarTech and those type of adapters always have supported TRIM out of the box with a sudo fstrim -av. I’ve definitely seen Sabrent ones though that don’t enable all those features automatically. I think it’s honestly related to UASP support (quirks mode turns off UASP). UASP stands for USB attached SCSI device and when it’s supported it enables a faster storage driver but some adapters don’t support it very well on the Pi. TRIM seems to be natively supported/enabled by UASP but it will not be in quirks mode.
In the past we have seen some people be able to stop using quirks altogether after the firmware updates but it’s rare and I don’t believe the SSHD is one of them (that’s one of the most common ones ever). The SSHD used to be on the naughty list before the firmware updates were available because it was almost impossible to get it going. You really have it in good shape for that adapter even though it’s not 100% perfect with automatically enabling TRIM, etc. as that used to be considered a straight-up non-working one for the Pi before the updates were available for it.
Have you speed tested it yet by chance at Pi Benchmarks? This will tell you how much of a performance penalty you’re getting from quirks. You can basically look up tests with your drive on other adapters that are not in quirks mode (the test detects this). I’d say it’s something like 30% roughly but it really varies by adapter / firmware / etc. If it’s only off by 20% it’s probably in great shape and should score 10x any Micro SD setup still. Hopefully that helps and thanks for sharing!
Thanks for leaving this, I think that may be a new one. I’ve noticed the USB 3.2 series seem more likely to work for sure. Thanks again!
Hans Christian
2 years ago
Hi. Thank you for a great source of information. Keep up the good work.
I want to ask, if its not possible to somehow only test external drive via your one line script. For example something along the lines below for sda1:
there is no need to test boot SD card performance every time, when I really want to test external usb-SSD performance, when testing external drives, and their usd-sata adapters.
Thanks for the feedback! I’ll add this to my to-do list here as I have a bunch of new drive models to add into the storage site. The script was originally intended to be ran on your boot device so if you have a SSD as your boot device it will test that instead.
I definitely agree with you though that the original intention and scope has expanded and that it makes a lot more sense to make it selectable for sure. Thanks again and take care!
Matt
2 years ago
Hey James, I know I’ve been asking for your advice a lot lately! I have a pi 4 with NVME and USB adapter stick that looks identical to the picture at the very top. Currently the only way it will work is if I have the nvme plugged into the powered usb hub. I don’t mind this but I do at the same time. The hub takes up a lot of space and all I want is my pi, nvme (and adapter of course), and usb dongles for my mouse and keyboard. Thanks as always for your expertise!
Sincerely
Matt
No problem at all, feel free to stop by anytime! So this is definitely a tricky problem. It’s really dependent on what drive you are using. For example my Samsung 960 EVO 250GB module will boot off a normal Pi 4 3.0-3.5A power adapter but my 1TB Samsung 960 EVO (same generation) won’t. It’s because the larger capacities require slightly more power.
I did a pretty comprehensive write-up of this on the Raspberry Pi forums recently for someone who is building a 4TB build. I’m guessing your module is a 1TB or higher as I’ve found the 128s/256s/even 512 a lot of the time more likely to work at this power level. Definitely check that out here.
The tricky thing with the USB is it has a shared power limit of 1.2A that is shared between all devices. Fortunately you are using dongles which use pretty low power as a wired keyboard will pull a lot more from your power budget. Definitely let me know if you have any questions after checking that out for sure!
Just a small easter egg in these instructions. Hes having you set the GUID to DeadBeef – d34db33f
Does anyone know a powered adapter that works without quirks. This one works, but with quirks.
It’s fast enough though, so if no-one has a better suggestion, I’ll stick with it.
Hey Daniel,
Oh wow, a powered SATA adapter! I tried looking for firmware updates for it and found this site (which can’t be the same company).
The main alternative I know of is that most people will use a powered USB hub like the little Sabrent hub. The power levels are very similar between the two. This adapter provides 2.0A and the Sabrent powered USB hub is 2.5A of dedicated power.
The only advantage of doing a setup like that is you could get maximum speeds by not having to use quirks mode. I haven’t seen a powered one that didn’t require quirks mode yet but I’m sure there are probably some out there (there seems to be no limit to how many companies will rebrand and sell a storage adapter).
I think your existing setup sounds pretty good. The quirks mode speed penalty is probably roughly 30%ish for most setups. You can verify this by running the speed test at pibenchmarks.com. You can compare that to people who are running the test using something like a StarTech adapter or one of the ones that works in UASP mode without quirks.
If you are hosting a server or something that requires very fast IO it may be worth doing this with a powered USB hub which will allow you to use any adapter basically (that works). It’s still an order of magnitude faster than any SD card even in quirks mode though (average score with a SD card is probably something like 800-1200, an average SSD is probably 5000-8000).
Hopefully that helps!
Sabrent 2.5-Inch SATA to USB 3.0 Tool-free External Hard Drive Enclosure [Optimized For SSD, Support UASP SATA III] Black (EC-UASP)
Model – EC-UASP
I had also updated the firmware from here.
Hey spiritmars,
Excellent, you definitely covered all the bases including the firmware update. Looks good, thanks for sharing!
Just to add before the firmware update I had to have quirks enabled, you have to find the device id using lsusb from another machine or Windows Device Manager. Then edit the /boot/cmdline.txt | add this line to the beginning usb-storage.quirks=152d:1561:u
But since the firmware update seems to work without.
Correction quirks is still needed. So to summarize.
Firmware update.
Enable Quirks as above.
Enable trim
Hey spiritmars,
Excellent results! That actually makes sense that it’s not wanting to work without quirks mode. Normally you don’t have to enable TRIM support on supported adapters. My StarTech and those type of adapters always have supported TRIM out of the box with a
sudo fstrim -av. I’ve definitely seen Sabrent ones though that don’t enable all those features automatically. I think it’s honestly related to UASP support (quirks mode turns off UASP). UASP stands for USB attached SCSI device and when it’s supported it enables a faster storage driver but some adapters don’t support it very well on the Pi. TRIM seems to be natively supported/enabled by UASP but it will not be in quirks mode.In the past we have seen some people be able to stop using quirks altogether after the firmware updates but it’s rare and I don’t believe the SSHD is one of them (that’s one of the most common ones ever). The SSHD used to be on the naughty list before the firmware updates were available because it was almost impossible to get it going. You really have it in good shape for that adapter even though it’s not 100% perfect with automatically enabling TRIM, etc. as that used to be considered a straight-up non-working one for the Pi before the updates were available for it.
Have you speed tested it yet by chance at Pi Benchmarks? This will tell you how much of a performance penalty you’re getting from quirks. You can basically look up tests with your drive on other adapters that are not in quirks mode (the test detects this). I’d say it’s something like 30% roughly but it really varies by adapter / firmware / etc. If it’s only off by 20% it’s probably in great shape and should score 10x any Micro SD setup still. Hopefully that helps and thanks for sharing!
Category Test ResultHDParm Disk Read 246.44 MB/s
HDParm Cached Disk Read 246.17 MB/s
DD Disk Write 111 MB/s
FIO 4k random read 4822 IOPS (19288 KB/s)
FIO 4k random write 5769 IOPS (23076 KB/s)
IOZone 4k read 25585 KB/s
IOZone 4k write 21775 KB/s
IOZone 4k random read 19446 KB/s
IOZone 4k random write 24576 KB/s
I’m using a Sabrent USB 3.2 Type-C Tool-Free Enclosure for M.2 PCIe NVMe and SATA SSDs (EC-SNVE) with a pi 4b and it boots happily from this.
Hey David,
Thanks for leaving this, I think that may be a new one. I’ve noticed the USB 3.2 series seem more likely to work for sure. Thanks again!
Hi. Thank you for a great source of information. Keep up the good work.
I want to ask, if its not possible to somehow only test external drive via your one line script. For example something along the lines below for sda1:
sudo curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/TheRemote/PiBenchmarks/master/Storage.sh /dev/sda1 | sudo bashthere is no need to test boot SD card performance every time, when I really want to test external usb-SSD performance, when testing external drives, and their usd-sata adapters.
Thank you
Hey Hans,
Thanks for the feedback! I’ll add this to my to-do list here as I have a bunch of new drive models to add into the storage site. The script was originally intended to be ran on your boot device so if you have a SSD as your boot device it will test that instead.
I definitely agree with you though that the original intention and scope has expanded and that it makes a lot more sense to make it selectable for sure. Thanks again and take care!
Hey James, I know I’ve been asking for your advice a lot lately! I have a pi 4 with NVME and USB adapter stick that looks identical to the picture at the very top. Currently the only way it will work is if I have the nvme plugged into the powered usb hub. I don’t mind this but I do at the same time. The hub takes up a lot of space and all I want is my pi, nvme (and adapter of course), and usb dongles for my mouse and keyboard. Thanks as always for your expertise!
Sincerely
Matt
Hey Matt,
No problem at all, feel free to stop by anytime! So this is definitely a tricky problem. It’s really dependent on what drive you are using. For example my Samsung 960 EVO 250GB module will boot off a normal Pi 4 3.0-3.5A power adapter but my 1TB Samsung 960 EVO (same generation) won’t. It’s because the larger capacities require slightly more power.
I did a pretty comprehensive write-up of this on the Raspberry Pi forums recently for someone who is building a 4TB build. I’m guessing your module is a 1TB or higher as I’ve found the 128s/256s/even 512 a lot of the time more likely to work at this power level. Definitely check that out here.
The tricky thing with the USB is it has a shared power limit of 1.2A that is shared between all devices. Fortunately you are using dongles which use pretty low power as a wired keyboard will pull a lot more from your power budget. Definitely let me know if you have any questions after checking that out for sure!
Somebody is trying to take a 4 or 8 terabyte NVMe and stick it inside one of those Argon cases.
Hey Yerni,
Yikes, that is a really tough build. I’m going to reply and see if I can give him a couple of ideas. Thanks for linking it!