I got a new external crucial X8 usb 3.0 ssd and it reports a very large blocksize.
Unfortunately, it seems to make playing videos over the network with samba have problems. It may also be suboptimal using it on a usb 2.0 port.
blockdev --report
shows most drives have 256 sector readahead
RO RA SSZ BSZ StartSec Size Device
ro 256 512 1024 0 205111296 /dev/loop0
ro 256 512 1024 0 204873728 /dev/loop1
ro 256 512 1024 0 4096 /dev/loop2
ro 256 512 1024 0 157855744 /dev/loop3
however, my crucial ssd gets a giant 131072 readahead value. I believe this is what's causing the problems with the network drive sharing.
sudo blockdev --setra 16384 /dev/sdb
sets it to a much better value and I don't see the audio dropouts.
You can also check the value by getting the readahead for a specific drive.
blockdev --getra /dev/sdb
HP ProLiant MicroServer Gen8 Server Xeon E3-1220L 16GB RAM No HDD's
$299.00
HP Proliant MicroServer Gen 8 2.3GHz CPU 16GB RAM NO DRIVES/CADDIES INCLUDED
$179.99
HP ProLiant HSTNS-5151 Micro Server 8GB RAM No Drives/Key/Caddies *READ*
$94.99
HP ProLiant MicroServer Gen8 Server Xeon E3-1220L 8GB RAM No HDD's
$229.99
HPE ProLiant MicroServer Gen 10 Plus, Xeon E-2224, 16GB DDR4, 1TB M.2 NVMe SSD
$750.00
ProLiant MicroServer Gen8 Intel Xeon E3-1220L V2 2.3GHz CPU 8GB RAM
$170.00
HP ProLiant MicroServer Gen8 Server Intel Xeon E3-1220L v2 16GB DDR3 (4) 4TB HDs
$399.00
HP ProLiant N36L Micro Server 633724-001 AMD Athlon II Neo N36L - No HDDs
$82.07
HPE ProLiant MicroServer Gen10 Plus v2 Ultra Micro Tower Server P54644001
$849.99
Supermicro A2SDi-4C-HLN4F Motherboard SYS-E200-9A 32GB ECC 250GB SSD 16GB M.2
$550.00