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
IBM System X3250 M3 Server 8GB RAM Intel Xeon x3440 2.53ghz (NO HDD)
$36.53
IBM Power S822 8284-22A 12SFF Power8 3.89GHz 6Core 64GB RAM No HDD Server System
$359.99
IBM Server System X3100 M4 | Xeon @ 3.10 Ghz | 8GB | 250GB HDD No OS (IG-PC26)
$96.01
1U IBM x3550 M5 4 Bay SFF SAS3 Server 2x E5-2683 V3 28 Core 128GB DDR4 2x Tray
$318.00
IBM System x3550 M3 Dual Intel Xeon X5650 @2.67GHz 32GB RAM No HDD
$74.50
$16000.00
IBM Server eServer | IBMR1000 | UPS 1000VA 700W -Without Batteries
$115.00
IBM SYSTEM X3250 M2 4194PDS Server CORE2 QUAD Q9400 2.6GHz 2GB SEE NOTES
$53.16
IBM x3650 M4 2x Xeon E5-2670 2.6ghz 16-Core / 64GB / M5110e / 2x PSU
$229.99
$7000.00