SSD taking forever to create file system

Involute · 29. August 2019

Newb here. I'm following along with the Beginner OMV Raspberry Pi installation video, installing OMV 4 on a Pi 4. I was able to complete the installation using a USB-powered 3TB HDD, even though you're supposed to use external powered HDDs (because that's what I had). Everything worked as expected, so I bought an SSD (Crucial MX500, 2TB) and tried to repeat the process after removing the HDD. Installing the file system on the HDD took about five minutes; on the SSD it took 15 hours just to write the blocks (15K of them) and then failed on the next step. Any ideas about what's going on and how to fix it?

Thanks for any help.

Adoby · 29. August 2019

I just did this, with no problems. And I think I have the exact same hardware?

I connected the 2TB Crucial MX500 to the RPi4.
I used the OMV web-interface to wipe the MX500. I did a quick wipe.
Then I created a new filesystem on the SSD. EXT4. A window opened as the blocks of the filesystem was created. It took about 5 minutes.

Done!

Some thing that may be considered:

Make sure you were connected to one of the blue USB3 ports.
I formatted to EXT4. Not NTFS or anything else,
Your SSD, the cable or the case might be bad. Test it on another computer. Or use another case/cable/interface. Partition, format and test read/write. And access SMART if the interface allows it.
I used a 2.5" case with a UASP-interface. Supposedly UASP makes the communication over USB between computer and drive faster/more efficient. Startech S2510BPU337.
I have noticed that the RPi4 seems quite warm when running OMV, even when "idling". I use a FLIRC case with my RPi4 and I suppose that helps my RPi4 to not overheat. I got the FLIRC case because I heard about overheating problems with the RPi4 an I wanted a case that can help cool the CPU. I checked the temp on the RPi4 at the end of the filesystem creation process. (I logged in using SSH and CPU temp is shown on the login screen.) The CPU temp It was 54C. Warm but not so hot that the CPU throttle. I believe that happens at 80C?

You might want to check how these things are on your end. If the RPi4 overheat then things would be expected to slow down to a crawl.

Also it is possible to format the SSD to EXT4 on another computer. Use a GPT partitioning, that is what OMV use when wiping the drive.

Involute · 29. August 2019

Thanks for the ideas, Adoby. I was able to use AOMEI Partition Assistant (free) to format the drive in about 10 seconds from my Windows 10 machine and mount it within OMV. I can read/write files to it via Windows File Explorer, so it's working the way it should, except performance is incredibly spotty, going from 112MB/s (nearly the full bandwidth of the Ethernet cable) down to a few KB/s. Could be temperature-related, though I had no similar problem with my HDD. Still, the console is showing an under-voltage error (I'm using a 3A supply as recommended; guess I should get a bigger one) and three EXT4-fs errors (a "Journal has aborted" and two "IO failures").

The drive enclosure I'm using claims to support UAS, but I'll pick up one of the Startechs, as well as a FLIRC (as my Pi is buried in a block of walnut I made for aesthetics rather than performance (for another project)), as that seems to be a known good configuration, per your experience.

Adoby · 29. August 2019

I have no reason to believe that the Startech cases are especially good. I bought this because it was thin, cheap and said USB3 and UASP in the description. And it seems to work fine.

Aux · 3. September 2019

Off topic,

I think the better solution is (at least in my case) a nanopi m4 with Armbian OS.
You can also do an OMV installation via "Armbian config", very handy and I am very happy with it.

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