Raspberry pi 4 8GB - SSD and adapter

[Alexander500]

Hi Guys

I've bought 4 raspberries which i'm gonna use as a kubernetes cluster and i'm planning on buying 4 SSDs and adapters so i can usb boot.
But i've read that raspberry pi is really sensitive about the SSD and adapter so i just want to know if the SSDs and adapters i've found are compatible with my raspberry pi 4 8GB.

Crucial BX500 CT120BX500SSD1 (Z) 120GB Internal SSD (3D NAND, SATA, 2.5-Inch):
https://www.amazon.de/Crucial-BX500-CT1 ... ACJPW?th=1

Eluteng SATA Cable USB to SATA Converter Adapter Super Speed USB3.0 to SATA Power Cable:
https://www.amazon.de/ELUTENG-Adapter-F ... 719&sr=8-1

Suggestions are welcomed

Also does USB boot work out of the box on newest 64 bit raspberry os version?

Thanks Alexander

[davidcoton]

That looks like the normally recommended SSD and adapter.
I have a Crucial MX500 and Eluteng working well on Raspberry Pi OS 64
I don't think it works by default OOB but setup is not difficult, see:

USB Boot setup instructions
Trim instructions

[bassamanator]

I recommend UGreen https://www.amazon.ca/UGREEN-Converter- ... 157&sr=8-3

It works great. It's UASP. You can also attach a 12V adapter to it (not included) if you decide to use this to attach an HDD to the RPI or other computer.

[Doug_]

Check power consumption on the Crucial drive - I have noted peak power consumption of 1.7A on some drives from this mfr.
Alternatively as an example the Samsung 860 EVO drives have an average read/write consumption of 2.5 or 3 Watts (0.5 or 0.6A at 5V) depending on size but I note they don't disclose the peak. The combined limit from the RPi4 USB ports is stated as 1.2A.

@bassamanator
Can you check and post the output from lsusb for the UGreen adapter. It would b good to know which chipset it uses.

[bassamanator]

@bassamanator
Can you check and post the output from lsusb for the UGreen adapter. It would b good to know which chipset it uses.

Look for ******

Code: Select all

░▒▓ ~ ▓▒░ lsusb -t                                                                             ░▒▓ 1 ✘  pi@rpi  10:06:37 PM ▓▒░
/:  Bus 02.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=xhci_hcd/4p, 5000M
    |__ Port 1: Dev 2, If 0, Class=Mass Storage, Driver=uas******, 5000M
/:  Bus 01.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=xhci_hcd/1p, 480M
    |__ Port 1: Dev 2, If 0, Class=Hub, Driver=hub/4p, 480M
        |__ Port 4: Dev 3, If 0, Class=Mass Storage, Driver=usb-storage, 480M

[ejolson]

Hi Guys

I've bought 4 raspberries which i'm gonna use as a kubernetes cluster and i'm planning on buying 4 SSDs and adapters so i can usb boot.
But i've read that raspberry pi is really sensitive about the SSD and adapter so i just want to know if the SSDs and adapters i've found are compatible with my raspberry pi 4 8GB.

Crucial BX500 CT120BX500SSD1 (Z) 120GB Internal SSD (3D NAND, SATA, 2.5-Inch):
https://www.amazon.de/Crucial-BX500-CT1 ... ACJPW?th=1

Eluteng SATA Cable USB to SATA Converter Adapter Super Speed USB3.0 to SATA Power Cable:
https://www.amazon.de/ELUTENG-Adapter-F ... 719&sr=8-1

Suggestions are welcomed

Also does USB boot work out of the box on newest 64 bit raspberry os version?

Thanks Alexander

I think those SSDs and SATA bridges will work. Make sure each Pi has plenty of power. I recently purchased a SanDisk SSD that seemed similar to the Crucial BX500, but it uses much more electricity, so anyway don't get a SanDisk SSD.

I've been setting up a cluster which I call the Pi cloud and eventually plan to run Kubernetes on that. Rather than having a separate SSD for each Pi, I've decided to mount the root file systems using iSCSI network block devices. The advantage is that I only need a couple big drives attached to one computer.

From what I understand, Kubernetes and Docker don't work well with NFS; however, since iSCSI appears as a locally attached physical drive the same problems should not occur. At present I've been doing other things and don't actually have Kubernetes working. I'll be posting updates as they happen to the thread

viewtopic.php?f=36&t=279176

see also

viewtopic.php?f=36&t=274553

for information about booting the Pi 4B with an iSCSI root like a data center.

Finally, to get USB boot to work you have to configure the onboard boot EEPROM. This is generally done by first booting from an SD card and running a utility to set the BOOT_ORDER option. More information is at

https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentati ... _config.md

In my opinion figuring out some sort of network boot for a cluster is much more convenient in the long term.

[Alexander500]

Thanks for all your input!
I've just ordered the parts.
@ejolson this is something I might look into if I at some point decide to get more nodes for my cluster

[Doug_]

@bassamanator
Can you check and post the output from lsusb for the UGreen adapter. It would b good to know which chipset it uses.

Look for ******

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░▒▓ ~ ▓▒░ lsusb -t                                                                             ░▒▓ 1 ✘  pi@rpi  10:06:37 PM ▓▒░
/:  Bus 02.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=xhci_hcd/4p, 5000M
    |__ Port 1: Dev 2, If 0, Class=Mass Storage, Driver=uas******, 5000M
/:  Bus 01.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=xhci_hcd/1p, 480M
    |__ Port 1: Dev 2, If 0, Class=Hub, Driver=hub/4p, 480M
        |__ Port 4: Dev 3, If 0, Class=Mass Storage, Driver=usb-storage, 480M

Yes I didn’t doubt UAS was working, lsusb without the t option will reveal the chipset family.

[Gnyueh]

RPi USB SSD performance basically capped at about 350M/s so a sata ssd is enough. Using an nvme m2 ssd will not be benifitial to seqential performance but 4kt1 performance will be better because of faster NAND, controller and SSD interface. For 4k32t performance the bottleneck will be UASP protocol, both will be capped at 100MB/s and nvme m2 will be far more expensive.
So I would suggest buying a sata ssd and a sata to usb adapter.
For sata ssd SAMSUNG 860evo, MICRON Crucial MX500 and intel 545s are suggested. All these SSDs have good quality and the reliability is high which is important ( for RPi usage power off manually is frequent so a good ssd will prevent data loss when cutting off power). These SSDs are not very power hungery which means they can be powered from RPi with USB3 cable (Some Server SSDs have better reliability but they are power hungery (another power supply cable is needed) and expensive). Also BX500 dont have a dram chip inside which worses its 4k performance so I wont suggest it.
For the adapter, buy one with ASM1153e, JMS578 or VL716 controller. ASM1153e is most reliable according to my experience. Also dont buy ORICO adapters(poor quality)!

[alkersan]

RPi USB SSD performance basically capped at about 350M/s so a sata ssd is enough. Using an nvme m2 ssd will not be benifitial to seqential performance but 4kt1 performance will be better because of faster NAND, controller and SSD interface. For 4k32t performance the bottleneck will be UASP protocol, both will be capped at 100MB/s and nvme m2 will be far more expensive.

I've been following the same logic, nvme is practically excessive. Thus I've started fiddling with sata drive and collected few msata usb bridges, and faced with problems.

The leftmost green is asm1153e based and I can't make it work reliably, even when plugged into PC: sometimes it is detected as usb-storage, sometimes as UASP, and almost always it fails during fio test. Same when plugged into raspberry. Initially I was thinking that provided power is not enough (the PoE powered RPI 4), so I've made that barbarian usb thingy and hooked multi meter into the 5V line to measure peak current - and it's less than 500mA. The ssd drive btw is SUV500MS/240G, which claims max power less then 2.5W.
Then I thought that the bridge is faulty, so I've ordered few more to try: the blue one is also asm1153, and the right one is based on Initio INIC-3639. The second asm1153e has the same problems. Initio is more interesting, as it works ok when plugged into PC (arch linux kernel 5.7.10) and detected without uasp. But rpi can't even boot with it.

Now I'm about getting m.2 sata drive and other adapters.
I'll keep troubleshooting all this mess and hope to come up with working compact design of ssd-enabled poe-powered rpi blade.

[HawaiianPi]

RPi USB SSD performance basically capped at about 350M/s so a sata ssd is enough. Using an nvme m2 ssd will not be benifitial to seqential performance but 4kt1 performance will be better because of faster NAND, controller and SSD interface.

Not really, because most benefits of NVMe will be lost to USB overhead. I've actually benchmarked a SATA-III SSD with a USB 3.0 adapter cable against an NVMe SSD in a USB 3.1 Gen2 enclosure on my Pi4B2, and the SATA SSD won (although by a small enough margin that performance would likely feel the same).

Drives tested were a SATA-III Samsung 850 EVO and an NVMe Samsung PM961. USB adapters used were an Eluteng USB 3.0 to SATA-III cable and a Wanfocyu NVMe USB 3.1 Gen 2 10Gbps enclosure. Both drives had the same system cloned to them, and were trimmed and rebooted before the tests. Test results were an average of 3 runs, and the 850 EVO SATA SSD scored slightly higher in all categories (including both read and write IOPS).

Of course there could be various reasons for the benchmark results, but it just goes to show that nothing can be assumed, except that NVMe drives are wasted on the Pi4B (that PM961 was blazing fast in my gaming laptop). I'd also like to point out that the NVMe drive consumed more power and ran much warmer than the SATA drive, and the NVMe enclosure was 3X more expensive than the USB3-SATA3 cable.

So if you want better performance from your Pi4B, then a 2.5 inch SATA-III SSD and the Eluteng USB 3.0 adapter cable will not only give you the best bang for the buck, but the best performance possible on the Raspberry Pi 4B. The Eluteng cable supports UASP and TRIM out of the box (just create UDEV rules and enable the weekly fstrim.timer service).

The NVMe enclosure also worked with UASP and TRIM, but due to the higher power consumption and cost, and complete lack of benefits, I really can't recommend NVMe for Raspberry Pi computers.

[bassamanator]

Yes I didn’t doubt UAS was working, lsusb without the t option will reveal the chipset family.

Oh here you go.

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░▒▓ ~ ▓▒░ lsusb                                                                                  ░▒▓ ✔  pi@rpi  04:40:31 PM ▓▒░
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 003: ID 04fc:0c25 Sunplus Technology Co., Ltd SATALink SPIF225A
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 2109:3431 VIA Labs, Inc. Hub
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

[ejolson]

The Eluteng cable supports UASP and TRIM out of the box (just create UDEV rules and enable the weekly fstrim.timer service).

What udev rules do I need for the Eluteng?

[HawaiianPi]

What udev rules do I need for the Eluteng?

This works for me.

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# /etc/udev/rules.d/01-unmap-trim.rules
# ASMedia ASM1153E and compatible bridge chips (Eluteng adapters)
ACTION=="add|change", ATTRS{idVendor}=="174c", ATTRS{idProduct}=="55aa", SUBSYSTEM=="scsi_disk", ATTR{provisioning_mode}="unmap"

Then run the following commands to enable and start the fstrim.timer service (and check the status).

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sudo systemctl enable fstrim.timer
sudo systemctl start fstrim.timer
sudo systemctl status fstrim.timer

[Doug_]

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

Do you have trim working with the adapter? Check with

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sudo fstrim -v /

[bassamanator]

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

Do you have trim working with the adapter? Check with

Code: Select all

sudo fstrim -v /

I would, however, I do not have an SSD attached to my rpi.

[rickylee64]

I've just ordered the parts.

Is it working as expected? TIA

[Morphy99]

For the adapter, buy one with ASM1153e, JMS578 or VL716 controller. ASM1153e is most reliable according to my experience. Also dont buy ORICO adapters(poor quality)!

I have just tried a VL716 from here and it didnt work.
ID 2109:0715 VIA Labs, Inc.
Had lots of errors n dmesg including this:

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EXT4-fs (sdd2): bad geometry: block count 31192150 exceeds size of device (31192149 blocks)

[ejolson]

For the adapter, buy one with ASM1153e, JMS578 or VL716 controller. ASM1153e is most reliable according to my experience. Also dont buy ORICO adapters(poor quality)!

I have just tried a VL716 from here and it didnt work.
ID 2109:0715 VIA Labs, Inc.
Had lots of errors n dmesg including this:

Code: Select all

EXT4-fs (sdd2): bad geometry: block count 31192150 exceeds size of device (31192149 blocks)

It looks like your partition is one too big. I wonder how that happened.

[Morphy99]

The partition is fine with other adaptors, I've not got the info to hand right now but I'll post it when I'm in front of the computer.

[Morphy99]

It looks like your partition is one too big. I wonder how that happened.

This was from the latest stable Libreelec, so I'm thinking something up there. I've just tried with an updated install of Raspbian and it seems to work great: dmesg

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sudo hdparm -tT /dev/sda /dev/sda

/dev/sda:
 Timing cached reads:   1314 MB in  2.00 seconds = 657.38 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads: 1050 MB in  3.00 seconds = 349.87 MB/sec

/dev/sda:
 Timing cached reads:   1328 MB in  2.00 seconds = 664.43 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads: 1046 MB in  3.00 seconds = 348.66 MB/sec

This other one works great too:

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

sudo hdparm -tT /dev/sda /dev/sda

/dev/sda:
Timing cached reads: 1334 MB in 2.00 seconds = 667.16 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 1020 MB in 3.01 seconds = 339.42 MB/sec

/dev/sda:
Timing cached reads: 1342 MB in 2.00 seconds = 670.87 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 1016 MB in 3.00 seconds = 338.50 MB/sec

But I don't like the fact it has the USB A directly on the board, connected directly it obstructs the other ports. Would need a USB A female to male.

EDIT: So it seems although the JMS567 looks OK when used as an external drive it doesn't like booting. Takes FOREVER to boot. Did a sudo apt full-update when it was booted with the ASM1153 but still crap. This is the dmesg log

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sudo hdparm -tT /dev/sda

/dev/sda:
 Timing cached reads:   884 MB in  2.00 seconds = 441.87 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads: 496 MB in  3.02 seconds = 164.28 MB/sec