Review on 💻 SABRENT Tool-Free External Hard Drive Enclosure 2.5-Inch SATA to USB 3.0 [Optimized for SSD, UASP SATA III Support] - Black (EC-UASP) by Anthony Epps

I have a new Raspberry Pi 4 (RPi4) running the latest Raspbian Buster with a newer and faster UAS driver /kernel module is running. I bought a Sabrent case, M/N: EC-UASP, USB 3.0 to SATA and a new 512GB ADATA SU800 SSD to hold Linux ext4 filesystems for use with my RPi4. I've had nothing but issues with very slow I/O bound behavior with my RPi4 since putting this SSD in a Sabrent enclosure. I didn't even manage to write the partition table to the SSD with gdisk or gparted without completely freezing the application or slowing down other applications and freezing for several minutes. I tried the new Sabrent SSD with an old CentOS 6 Linux machine using the old mass storage driver/kernel module and I had no problems placing the partition table and formatting those partitions on the SSD as ext4. I then set up Raspbian Buster to boot to the SSD for its root filesystem and everything depends on the four red raspberries in Rapbian's early boot sequence. I removed the splash directives and pretty from /boot/cmdline.txt. THEN I saw all errors scrolling for the UAS driver calling uas_eh_abort_handler and repeatedly logging USB 2-1 events: Reset SuperSpeed Gen 1 USB Device Number. I googled USB. reset the SuperSpeed bug and got an article on the raspberrypi_dot_org forums that recommended changing the Sabrent VendorId and ModelId combination for the UAS driver with the prefix USB Weirdness in the /boot/cmdline.txt file on my RPi4 to the black to put list. That put an end to all the chatter about the UAS driver and io-bound behavior. However, this means I'm using a mass storage driver which is much older, slower and doesn't take advantage of my USB 3.0 SSD like a UAS driver would. This referenced article on the RPi Foundation forums reports that some vendors are not fully implementing the UAS specification and this can cause the controllers in these devices to ignore some UAS commands and cause a reset. They even specifically gave the example of how to grab another Sabrent USB 3.0 SATA adapter that triggers resets etc. I'm not happy to hear about this and hope Sabrent reads this and a case replacement, firmware update or suggesting another patch so I can take full advantage of the USB 3.0 to SATA adapter I bought from them in combination with the UAS driver on my RPi 4th update. I opened a Sabrent support case on July 20, 2019 regarding the issues described in this overview for Sabrent EC-UASP. Drive. A Sabrent Support Specialist named Anna informed me that she would forward my problem report to the Sabrent lab. I contacted Anna on August 2nd and 19th, 2019 and was informed that in both cases Anna had not yet received a response from the lab. I then gave this problem some time to get through the system. I checked my email today, December 18, 2019 and found no further updates from Anna or anyone else supporting Sabrent. I then logged into my Sabrent.com account and found that there were no longer any support cases associated with my account. Where is the Sabrent support ticket I opened on July 20, 2019 regarding this issue? Why have I never received any news after being told that Anna from Sabrent has no news from the lab? Why does this drive claim to have UASP support? I'm still giving the enclosure 2 stars because I was able to get it to run slower than it should by blacklisting this drive for use with the Raspbian UAS driver to use the mass storage driver, but I am not thrilled with buying a Disk Enclosure that says it has the UASP support I want and much faster, and then finds that the UASP support it offers doesn't work. I'm even less pleased that Sabrent support is bypassing me. Now I don't know in which case to try to get this to work and I'm very disappointed that Sabrent support seems to have swept everything under the rug so to speak. a support ticket has been submitted, unless we haven't tested this yet, then keep quiet. I found a blog about it, say "famous" in the Raspberry Pi 4 community, Sabrent UASP, USB 3.0 to SATA III - EC-UASP Enclosure. on the Raspberry Pi forums and included a link to it in my request to Sabrent Support. I recently reviewed and read all the answers on this blog. It turns out a good soul shopping on Australian website Revain bought a USB 3.0 and SATA III compatible UGREEN UASP drive enclosure that actually appears to work with a Raspberry Pi 4 - using the Raspbian Buster uas driver. In other words, I bought the UGreen M/N 30848 case from amazon.com in the US and tested it myself. I didn't need to blacklist - by adding the idVendor + idProduct lines to the quirky list at the beginning of a line of instructions in /boot/cmdline.txt on my RPi4 to have the UGreen case fully work with my Pi. uas mode. FWIW, the dmesg output on my RPi4 seems to identify idVendor=174c and idProduct a=55aa for my new Ugreen case. I referenced the Revain model number 30848 from the amazon.au listing recommended by a friendly commenter on the RPi4 blog. I was able to find and order one, an Ugreen M/N 30848 case, for $10.99 compared to $8.99 for a Sabrent case, which was the source of so much instantaneous and constant bus noise in my RPi4. I do not recommend Sabrent Technical Support to anyone. If you're planning to use an SSD or other external hard drive with your RPi4 in a USB 3.0 to SATA III external enclosure that claims to be UASP compliant, go with the Ugreen M/N 30848 Disclosure : 1) I own and tested with the original RPi4 version, not the version. 1.2RPi4. 2) I bought a Canakit RPi4 kit and used the USB-C power adapter that Canakit supplied with my RPi4. 3) I haven't done any USB-C power delivery mods on my RPi4 board. 4) I have been using the same ADATA SU800 512GB 3D-NAND 2.5" SATA III 2.5" for all 7 months with my RPi4 and Sabrent and Ugreen cases. 5) You may experience completely different mileage with the Sabrent EC-UASP case if you use this case to connect the same SSD to a different host with an external USB 3.0 port than the first/original version of the RPi4, e.g . compared to a newer RPi4 rev 1.2 or another computer/host. 5) Sabrent advised me to try returning a Sabrent hull that I was having issues with. I wanted them to fix their product or release a firmware update. However, they led me to believe that they were trying to reproduce my problems in their lab and then the radio went silent for months after I followed my support ticket at least 2 or 3 times and they kept saying they haven't started yet, to replicate my problems in their lab. 6) After all the UASP compatibility hype, hdparm test -t /dev/sda1 shows a less than 10% increase in advertised speed when using a Ugreen case versus a Sabrent case. I was new to UASP compatible cases and had no idea what to expect. My test results were: 304-308 MB/s with Sabrent EC UASP chassis and blacklisted uas driver vs. 334-339 MB/s with UGreen M/N: 30848 chassis and no uas driver blacklisted + no constant bus irritation resets without blacklisting my new UASP compatible chassis for use with the standard uas Raspbian Buster driver.