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
1U Supermicro Server 10 Bay 2x Intel Xeon 3.3Ghz 8C 128GB RAM 240GB SSD 2x 10GBE
$259.00
Dell PowerEdge T420 2x Xeon E5-2430 V2 2.50GHZ 32GB DDR3-1600MHZ 2x 550W PSU
$149.95
Dell PowerEdge T620 Server 2x E5-2630 v2 2.60GHz 64GB RAM - NO HDDs
$242.99
Cisco UCS C220 M4 1x Xeon E5-2667 V4 3.20GHZ 128GB DDR4-2400MHZ 2x 770W AC PSU
$129.99
DELL R630 SERVER 8 x 2.5'' 2X E5-2680V4 32GB RAM IDRAC ENT & NDC 2X 495W PSU
$169.95
Dell PowerEdge R730XD 28 Core Server 2X Xeon E5-2680 V4 H730 128GB RAM No HDD
$389.99
Dell PowerEdge R630 Server 2x E5-2640v3 2.60Ghz 16-Core 64GB H330
$182.65
SuperMicro Server 505-2 Intel Atom 2.4GHz 8GB RAM SYS-5018A-FTN4 1U Rackmount
$202.49
Dell Poweredge R730xd 12x 3.5 + 2x 2.5 / 2x E5-2680 v3 2.5ghz 32gb H730 2x 1100w
$349.99
DELL PowerEdge R730 Server 2x E5-2697v4 2.3GHz =36 Cores 128GB H730 4xRJ45
$461.00