Re:USB memory sticks are getting worse
by jsheard on Wednesday February 14, 2024 @08:42PM
(#39378132)
Thankfully NVMe enclosures are dirt cheap now, so if you can deal with a little more bulk you can adapt an SSD from any reputable manufacturer into an extremely fast and reliable USB drive. Ideally look for an SSD with onboard DRAM though - drives without their own DRAM typically borrow memory from the host instead, but that trick doesn't work over USB, so their performance is degraded.
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Re:USB memory sticks are getting worse
by choilive on Wednesday February 14, 2024 @10:22PM
(#39378724)
I feel like this is not ideal for an external enclosure. Sudden power loss could lead to corruption and data loss if the data is buffered in DRAM.
Re:USB memory sticks are getting worse
by jsheard on Thursday February 15, 2024 @07:26AM
(#39381849)
It will depend on the SSD controller, but AFAIK the DRAM usually isn't used for write caching. It's used to hold a copy of the bookkeeping structures which map virtual block locations to physical flash locations, which are mirrored on the non-volatile flash anyway, but are much quicker to random-read from DRAM.
If you use a DRAM-less drive in a situation where it can't DMA host memory, such as in a USB enclosure, it has to read those structures from flash on-the-fly which is obviously slower.
Re:USB memory sticks are getting worse
by walterbell on Thursday February 15, 2024 @01:44AM
(#39379815)
Compact aluminum enclosure for 2242 SSDs isn't much larger than a USB drive, https://www.amazon.com/ElecGear-2242-Hard-Enclosure-Magenets...