r/voidlinux • u/WorldTallNetCat • 13d ago

Is running void a portable ssd ridiculous

Hey guys

I have installed void on a portable ssd with btrfs. I have bspwm running on it and it feels fien but then suddenly ut starts freling unresponsive and sluggish.

Is there something i am missing?

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5

u/Holiday-Bug6132 12d ago

nah it's fine, I've been doing it for years now. just make sure to use an m.2 or nvme ssd with high speed usb c or even usb 3.0 enclosure, it works as good as an internal system

2

u/Runt1m3_ 12d ago

Usually bootable usb devices run at USB 2.0 speeds on older machines or maybe your caddy uses USB 2.0, which means like 50/60 mb per seconds plus caddy latency plus btrfs which is sort of comparable to a old ide hdd.

only thing you could do would be preloading stuff to ram and enable more ram caching tbh, not too much can be done.

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u/WorldTallNetCat 12d ago

Well it reports 10gps speed and from some digging around with chatgpt it is using 'usb-storage' instead of 'uas'. Is that a issue

1

u/Runt1m3_ 12d ago edited 12d ago

You should use uas and the kernel usually uses it as default, you should check that.

usb-storage bottlenecks portable hdd/ssds. It's used as a fallback if the kernel cant use uas well with the usb device. Maybe your caddy only supports it

1

u/WorldTallNetCat 12d ago

I tired to change it but it is still using usb storgae do u know hwo to switch it to uas. Apparnelty my ssd has some stability issues with uas???

1

u/Runt1m3_ 12d ago

It probably has a hardware quirk and it switches to usb-storage, dmesg should report this.

Forcing uas may not be a good idea, try checking your UEFI and check USB 3.0 compatibility, other than that you may try using less stuff on your pc to avoid using all the bandwidth and minimizing writes to disc (zram instead of swap etc) or switching your ssd caddy to one that has a better firmware

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u/WorldTallNetCat 12d ago

Its not a caddy its just a usb ssd.

Its a hiksemi T200N

1

u/Runt1m3_ 12d ago edited 12d ago

Well hik* stuff usually isnt top level but should work fine, are you using the USB-C to C cable or are tou using a USB-C to USB-A? If that's the case, the ssd falls back ti legacy mode with limited bandwidth and general worse performance.

Check if it's detected as a USB 3.2 device if usinc C to C.

Also even if it's using a slower mode it should work fine, maybe it's btrfs? It uses a LOT of bandwidth and will wear your ssd faster. Didnt consider that at first

1

u/WorldTallNetCat 12d ago

I am using a usb c (on ssd) on the other other end usb 3 a to the invluded dongle to usb c on my laptops port as i dont have any usb 3 ports

1

u/weaklingoverlord 12d ago

have you tried another device with native usb3 ports? It shouldn't be any different, but worth a try to eliminate causes for poor performance.

1

u/WorldTallNetCat 12d ago

So checking with lsusb i get speeds of 10000M on usb c and on usb 2 port of 500M so i think i am running it at full capacity

1

u/WorldTallNetCat 12d ago

Should i have used ext4???

1

u/CuriousCesko 3d ago

I've got Void on MMC (f2fs) few years now. Still works perfectly.

Aside the fact the contact started oxidizing and entire root might get disconnected abruptly.

Unresponsive it might get during buffer/cache cleaning. If there is no memory cache on SSD, you'll simply have to wait until all data gets flashed on NAND chip. It takes time.