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Comment by Yokolos

3 months ago

I have two SSK USB sticks that give me write speeds of up to 1GB/s (as long as they're not filled to the brim). I've copied things like 80GB games in something like 2-3 minutes. A real SSD will always be best, but I'm pretty happy with these USB sticks.

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Yokolos

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jack_tripper  3 months ago

The USB sticks you talk about are basically USB SSDs, not what we know as traditional thumb drives.

I have a similar one too from HP(PNY), and it's crazy fast for its size, but the issue is its controller (ASMedia IIRC) reports it to the OS as a UAS (USB Attached SCSI), similar to an external HDD, instead of Removable Mass Storage as most thumb drives do, so you can't hot -plug/-unplug it, and that controller seems to be backlisted by the Linux kernel for some reason, so it's not recognized on linux unless I fiddle with the "options usb-storage quirks" kernel parameters, but even so my BIOS can't detect it to boot from it. From what I understand the issue causing all this is that it's a native 4K-block device causing issues with booting on it as typically 512-byte block native devices are required for EFI boot, or at least that have 512-byte emulation support which this controller does not.

I am so disappointed because I bought a fast USB SSD to install and dual boot Linux on it as a second drive for my Windows laptop. If only I knew that there's such a big difference in the types of USB drives out there and that they're not all remotely the same.

So do your due diligence on linux compatibility, if you ever want to buy these USB SSDs.

  • Yokolos  3 months ago

    I'm not sure what you mean by "so you can't hot -plug/-unplug it". If I use it in Windows or Linux, I can eject it like I can any standard non-SSD USB stick. I'm also not sure what issues you've been having with booting from them. I've occasionally used these things to boot Linux LiveCDs without issue. Might be a compatibility issue with your BIOS specifically? I've seen some messed up BIOS's that simply defy all expectation in how they work. Then again, I primarily only use these things to transfer data between machines (primarily games), so all I really care about is their performance.

    I also preferably call them USB sticks instead of SSDs, since afaik TRIM isn't supported on them, which makes them significantly worse than any proper SSD.

    • jack_tripper  3 months ago

      >I'm not sure what you mean by "so you can't hot -plug/-unplug it"

      Only UMS (universal mass storage) devices can be hot-plugged-unplugged without ejecting, while UAS (USB Attached SCSI) devices cannot and need to be ejected beforehand since the OS treats them like an internal drive instead of a removable one.

      > I'm also not sure what issues you've been having with booting from them. Might be a compatibility issue with your BIOS specifically?

      NO, like I explained before, it's not the BIOS, it's the lack of 512 block support on the USB SSD controller which is very uncommon on traditional USB thumb drives but is needed for UEFI/BIOS boot. USB tools (like Rufus in default mode) create 512B-aligned images, but if the drive is 4Kn-only, GRUB or kernel can't read the filesystem.

      The lack of 512 support seems to be a issue on the newer lower-cost USB SSDs which are designed to just do NTFS file transfers on the go and not host an OS for boot.

      >I've occasionally used these things to boot Linux LiveCDs without issue.

      Because yours have 512 native support like most USB drives. But No 512 support, no OS boot. Simple.

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