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
Juniper EX3300-48P, 48 Port PoE+ Gigabit Network Switch with RACK EARS, RESET
$46.99
Juniper Networks EX3300 EX3300-48P PoE+ 48-Port 4x SFP Gigabyte Ethernet Switch
$59.99
Juniper Networks EX3300 EX3300-48P 48-Port Gigabit PoE+ Switch
$59.95
JUNIPER EX3400-48P 48x 1GB PoE+ RJ-45 4x 10GB SFP+ 2x 40GB QSFP+, DUAL AC POWER
$168.00
Juniper EX3300-48P 48-Port 10/100/1000BASE-T (48 PoE+ ports) with 4 SFP+
$74.00
Juniper EX3400-48P 48-Ports PoE+ 4x SFP+ and 2x QSFP+ Managed Switch Tested
$140.00
Juniper Networks SRX320-POE 6-Port Service Gateway Security Appliance Tested
$149.99
Juniper EX2200-C-12T-2G 12-Port 10/100/1000 2x SFP Uplinks Compact Switch
$74.99
Juniper Networks SRX220 8-Port Gigabit Services Gateway Security Appliance
$45.00
Juniper QFX5100-48T-AFO 48 100M/1G/10G Base-T 6 QSFP AFO
$439.00