mSATA SSD over USB adater: 300MB/s @ Linux versus 100MB/s @ FreeBSD

[Gary Jennejohn]

On Thu, 05 Nov 2020 10:13:51 +0100
vermaden <vermaden at interia.pl> wrote:

> Hi.
> 
> After this tweet:
> https://twitter.com/ed_maste/status/1323635634221756416
> 
> Ed Maste suggested that I should post here some details about it. This is what I am doing right now.
> 
> The case is/was:
> 
> Dell XPS 12 with Intel i5-3317U CPU from 2012 and internal mSATA SSD (typical 500MB/s read/write SSD).
> 
> This one to be precise:
> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/12/review-dells-acrobatic-xps-12-is-the-windows-8-convertible-to-beat/
> 
> Then with this USB<>mSATA adapter (probably some noname from China:
> https://allegro.pl/oferta/pendrive-ssd-mini-pci-e-msata-do-usb-3-0-6016971433
> 
> I attached another mSATA SSD (typical 500MB/s read/write SSD) to the one of the USB 3.0 ports.
> 
> Then I executed this command:
> 
> // FROM INTERNAL TO EXTERNAL @ Linux
> # dd < /dev/sda > /deb/sdb bs=8M status=progress
> 
> // FROM INTERNAL TO EXTERNAL @ FreeBSD
> # dd < /dev/ada0 > /deb/da0 bs=8m status=progress
> 
> Average speed of that operation was:
> 
> Linux: 300MB/s
> 
> FreeBSD: 100MB/s
> 
> Here are the detailed logs of dmesg/pciconf/usbconfig commands:
> http://athena.zia.io/~vermaden/dell.xps.12.logs.tar.gz
> 
> For this operation I booted from the FreeBSD 12.2-RELEASE 'memstick' image on USB pendrive.
> 
> Not sure how else I can help.
> 

FreeBSD does transfers with a maximum size of 128kB.  Try repeating both tests
with bs=128k to have a level playing field.

-- 
Gary Jennejohn