USB faster then NVME?

Hi, I’ve perform some performance test on my v1.2 version rockpi. And in some tests I see that SSD connected with USB has higher writing speed:

/media/2tb - mounted device on USB
/media/clouddrive -SSD connected with extended board

Same manufacturing of SSD, but one has 1tb, another 2tb.

Interesting if someone perform tests on sata extender as well?

This is not the normal speed, please confirm whether the power supply is enough.

@setq
More than enough. I’m using original cable and adapter. When no loading it takes 9v and 0.280A of power. During this test it rise to 0.400A and some times to 0.800A.
I’ve also tried with enabling PCIE 2gen from https://wiki.radxa.com/Rockpi4/dev/libmraa#Install_essential_packages . But still no results.
Next probably I will try reconnect SSD.

Is iozone telling you the same?

Real world comparisons:

@igorp I will check article later today. Thanks for link

@igorp with iozone it looks near same results. But it far from expected values. In many parameters there similar results.

'**SSD via nvme** Command line used: iozone -a -s 1G -r 1024k /media/clouddrive/mnt/`
'                                                       random    random     bkwd    record    stride                                    
' kB       reclen    write  rewrite    read    reread    read     write     read   rewrite      read   fwrite frewrite    fread  freread
' 1048576    1024    37098    39140  1210040  1528877  1516556    49675  1503168     43507   1451226    44287    39881  1432341  1531885
'
' **SSD via USB** Command line used: iozone -a -s 1G -r 1024k /media/2tb/mnt/
'                                                       random    random     bkwd    record    stride                                    
' kB       reclen    write  rewrite    read    reread    read     write     read   rewrite      read   fwrite frewrite    fread  freread
' 1048576    1024    35029    43690  1392640  1479077  1537154    43400  1309000     41388   1078389    42734    43170  1385460  1544194

And results really not same with SSD test on my PC.

Afte adding oflag=direct to dd command, I got higher result then original :

'**SSD via nvme** dd if=/dev/zero of=/media/clouddrive/tmp bs=100M count=100 oflag=direct; rm -f /media/clouddrive/tmp
'100+0 records in
'100+0 records out
'10485760000 bytes (10 GB, 9.8 GiB) copied, 37.7723 s, 278 MB/s
'**SSD via USB** dd if=/dev/zero of=/media/2tb/tmp bs=100M count=100 oflag=direct; rm -f /media/2tb/tmp
'100+0 records in
'100+0 records out
'10485760000 bytes (10 GB, 9.8 GiB) copied, 52.7008 s, 199 MB/s

Don’t have NvME addon for Rockpi, which is why I tried on most similar board I have, Nanopi M4 which only uses 2 PCI lines:

                                                          random    random     bkwd    record    stride                                    
          kB  reclen    write  rewrite    read    reread    read     write     read   rewrite      read   fwrite frewrite    fread  freread
     1048576    1024   497044   890079  1589469  1664055  1657840   959355  1597012   1118415   1668736   758941   739922  1610518  1671279

I would say expected numbers for Samsung SM961/960 PRO 256Gb http://ix.io/28BD This is also the only spare drive I have.

Below is my x86 workstation running preview of Ubuntu desktop 20.04 with the same NvMe just 512GB in size. Does this looks normal? :wink:

                                                          random    random     bkwd    record    stride                                    
          kB  reclen    write  rewrite    read    reread    read     write     read   rewrite      read   fwrite frewrite    fread  freread
     1048576    1024  3009473  5714058 13608162 11424007 14298600  5703742 13671657   9139751  14379382  4917607  4911407 13871346 14319922

@igorp I think in my rockpi there present power problems, as problem with freezing, which I mentioned here USB connected SSD leads to feeeze still valid.

Probably I will try to power-up with differ way, throw GPIO pins. (I will research if it’s possible)

If you don’t have a proper USB-C PSU - I am using this one https://amzn.to/2uCDbLP Its an overkill for this but I also charge or power my x86 Laptop with it. Alternatively, you can use such adaptors:
https://twitter.com/armbian/status/1179762024357740546 and some regular 5V PSU witch can secure 3+ amps.

Also eliminate software and try with Armbian, both kernels.

@igorp I have original fast charger 9v/3A, Also tried with differ one 9v/2.5A.
So I expect problem not related ti adapter itself, but to board.

Software support is most critical component. Did you tried the same on Armbian?

@igorp Nice point, I will try with differ OS.

@igorp finally Ive test with few OS. But looks problem really HW.
So lets wait for response @radxa team.
@jack maybe you can support as well?

Up!
Can someone test SSD speed on v1.2 board?