Adaptor hell

Discussion of hardware related issues
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wove
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Adaptor hell

Post by wove »

The Pi 400 will boot from either a micro SD card, or from USB. I have an M.2 SATA SSD and an M-SATA SSD pulled from retired Thinkpads. I have a few just plain SATA SSDs as well. It has proven something of a challenge to find adaptors to have them work with the Pi 400.

I first purchased little case adaptors. They are small and have a short USB cable to connect. From a form factor stand point they were just what I was looking for. Well the M-SATA one worked like a champ, but the M.2 adaptor does not work at all. The SATA to USB adaptor works sometimes and sometimes not.

I finally got a SATA to M.2 SATA adaptor which works with the SATA to USB adaptor. It is a much clunkier setup than I would like, but I do have Trinity running on top of Raspberry Pi OS from a 256GB m.2 card. I am getting read speed of ~375MB/s which is a huge speed bump over the SD card.
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tlmiller
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Re: Adaptor hell

Post by tlmiller »

I MIGHT have a few USB hard drives setting around...
Image

1TB 3.2G1 (NVMe)
1TB 3.2G1 on A, 3.1G1x2 on C (NVMe)
1TB m.2 SATA 3.2G1
1TB m.2 2242 SATA 3.2G1
256 m.2 2242 SATA 3.2G1

If you're unfamiliar, USB 3.0, USB 3.1G1, and USB 3.2G1 (5 Gbps) all are the actual same thing.
USB 3.1G2 = 3.2G1x2 (10 Gbps)
And USB 3.2G2x2 = 20 Gbps. Yes, their renaming things gets confusing.
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crosscourt
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Re: Adaptor hell

Post by crosscourt »

My M.2 USB adapter works well but doesnt work with NVMe drives only SATA drives. I also use USB to SATA drive connector cables for my 2.5 drives.
Except for some minor cloning issues its been a good experience.
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tlmiller
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Re: Adaptor hell

Post by tlmiller »

I used to have a 2.5" USB 3.2G1 adapter I loved. It was quick-open, easy out. Toolless. So could SUPER quick swap out drives in it. But when all my machines except my desktop have ONLY m.2 slots (and even 1/2 of the drives on the desktop are m.2), I got rid of it along with all my 2.5" drives.

FOUND IT!!

Image

Ugly enclosure, large and just not pretty. But could fit 5mm, 7mm, 9mm, even the rare 12 (11?)mm 2.5" drives. The padding on the inside of the door kept enough pressure on the drive to keep it snugly plugged into the SATA port without screws. Toolless so literally pop open, pull drive out, put new in. Attached cable so only 1 side to worry about getting damaged, and it stored in itself, so only had to worry if you were lazy or using it currently. Absolutely LOVED that thing.
wove
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Re: Adaptor hell

Post by wove »

The Pi 400 has a lot of ports across the back (ethernet, 3 USB type A, 1 USB C, 2 micro HDMI, a micro SD card slot and the 40 pin GPIO connector) which means and device that is bigger than the connector plug on a cable will block adjoining ports. I need to pick adaptors that connected with cables.

Most adaptors are inexpensive commodity parts. Three adaptors I ordered from 2 sources each with their own unique branding turn out to all be made by JMicron. They all show up with unique device IDs, but have the same vendor ID. I have read that StarTech branded SATA to USB adaptors all work with the Pi, so I have ordered one of those. I have also read that not all 2.5" SATA SSDs work with the PI. Kingston SSDs appear to be the most compatible of the consumer brands. Most all of the commercial (expensive) brands also work.

From what I have read the Pi device and the Raspberry OS kernel and drivers check to ensure that all commands, even the more arcane commands, that are part of the official specification are implemented by the drive/adaptor hardware. Most consumer drives only implement the the most commonly needed commands, those that report a command not present, simply fail, however many report the commands are there, only to fail when the driver issues those commands.

Kingston devices do work fine. SiliconPower devices fail instantly, with most not even being recognised. I usually go for the cheaper devices, which could be off brands, sometimes they are new older stock, and a few are pulls from when I have upgraded storage for someone. I can get by with 60GB, but it feels very cramped. 120GB works pretty well for me but does involve more drive clean up than I like. 160GB is sort of my sweet spot, but it is rare to see that size drive any more, so now I use 250GB storage as my go to size. And I do now have 2 250GB bootable storage devices working with the Pi 400 and that makes me a happy camper.
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crosscourt
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Re: Adaptor hell

Post by crosscourt »

Outside of my Dell USFFs and a few of my older laptops, it wont be long before Im not using 2.5 drives any more.
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wove
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Re: Adaptor hell

Post by wove »

The second bit at the apple proved successful. The new Nekteck m.2 adaptor and the StarTech SATA to USB adaptor both work very well with the Pi. The read write speeds are about what I had (~370MB/s), but there is almost no "handshake" delay from either adaptor, so both will boot an OS to the desktop in a few seconds compared to the earlier adaptor to adaptor setup I got working, which took a couple minutes.
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