On Friday, October 5, 2018 at 8:17:52 AM UTC+2, Anssi Saari wrote:
> jack4747@gmail.com writes:
>
> >> Any S.M.A.R.T. diagnostic tool will tell you spare blocks remaining. The
> >> different parameters have fixed IDs, spare blocks remaining is ID=251
> >> (0xFB) or sometimes 232 (0xE8), see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T.
> >
> > SD cards and USB sticks usually don't have SMART protocol.
>
> Yes. One might consider an SSD in a USB enclosure to have that
> information. I recently built one for myself, just as a fast portable
> media. Enclosure from ebay and drive (M.2 2240 size) from a local store.
>
> Price was about the same as a fast USB stick (128 GB) but you get
> support for TRIM at least. I haven't checked SMART, support really
> depends on whether the USB controller passes through those commands
> through to the driver or not.
>
> Physical size is somewhat wider and longer than your typical USB
> stick. The width causes trouble with tightly grouped USB ports. There
> might be better enclosures than what I got.

Mmhh, I'm not sure that having a SSD is better than a normal mechanical HD,
since the bottleneck is the (slow) USB2 connection.
Raw throughput (with big files) will be the same, and IOPS...mah...I expect
some buffering in the USB driver linux, and in the USB controller on the disk
side, so probably the faster access time of the SSD is masked by the USB.
I don't know. Someone has done some benchmarks? I dont' have a SSD round to
try.

Bye Jack

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