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Wyse 3040 (N10D): Storage 

Alternative Storage

In October 2024 I heard from Szymon who wanted to share his solution to the problem of the small and slow eMMC used by the Wyse 3040. Essentially it was to add a NVMe SSD via the USB3.0 port on the front panel. The thing that caught my attention was the neat way in which he had put it together:

Wyse 3040 with USB extension.

Over to Szymon:

The solution is an Elecgear NV-2242A case and two angled USB3.0-A M-F adapters:

USB rightangle connectors.

They or their equivalents are easy to find from various suppliers.

There are various points to bear in mind when engineering your solution:

  1. The NVMe case is almost always made of metal and hence is heavy. If you do nothing about it that weight will be hanging off the front USB 3.0 port via the two right angle connectors so you need to do something to support it. This could be zip ties or more elegantly by double sided tape to attach it to the 3040. If you ever need to dismantle this rather permanent solution isopropyl alcohol helps a lot to get rid of the tape.
  2. It is my experience that the NVMe SSD enclosures tend to get super hot. For example my Western Digital SN530, with constant writes for 10+ min, can get up to 75°C. This means that you need to select the right type of double-sided tape if that is your chosen method of support. For example 3M VHB GPH110 GF is good for temperatures up to 150°C whilst the non-VHB tape's working range is generally 20°C to 40°C.
  3. Most of the Chinese no-name USB3-to-NVMe enclosures I've seen tend are based on the JMS583 chipset and never put the disk into sleep mode. This means significant amount of heat in idle and risk of chipset dying after days/weeks of use.
  4. The 3040 comes with a small 15W PSU.
  5. When selecting your M.2 SSD bear in mind points (2) and (4) and aim for one with the low(est) power draw you can.

For those that are interested in the technical details of component selection:

The internal Realtek RTL9210 USB bridge supports up to 10GBps transfer speeds with USB 3.1 Gen2. However the Wyse 3040 only has 5Gbps USB3.1 Gen1 port. This actually doesn't matter as the bridge's chipset is throttled for power considerations and the CPU is too slow to make use of full speed anyway.

In summary the USB3/NVMe add-on gives you real 300MB/s transfers, SMART reporting and the ability to easily replace a failed drive. In contrast the on-board eMMC does not offer SMART reporting, and delivers only 35MB/s sustained sequential data writes and pathetic random I/O.

root@3040u1~[]# lsusb -t
/:  Bus 02.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=xhci_hcd/6p, 5000M
    |__ Port 1: Dev 2, If 0, Class=Mass Storage, Driver=uas, 5000M
/:  Bus 01.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=xhci_hcd/7p, 5000M
root@3040u1~[]# lsusb grep NVM
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 0bda:9210 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTL9210 M.2 NVME Adapter
root@3040u1~[]# smartctl -a /dev/sda | grep "Model Number"
Model Number:                       PC SN530 NVMe WDC 256GB
root@3040u1~[]# lsblk
NAME          MAJ:MIN  RM    SIZE RO TYPE COMMENTS
sda             8:0     0  238.5G  0 disk
├─sda1          8:1     0    448M  0 part  /boot/efi
├─sda2          8:2     0    480M  0 part  /boot
└─sda3          8:3     0  237.5G  0 part
  └─sda3_crypt 253:0    0  237.5G  0 crypt /
mmcblk0        179:0    0    7.3G  0 disk
├─mmcblk0p1    179:0    0 1023.9M  0 part
├─mmcblk0p2    179:1    0      1G  0 part
├─mmcblk0p3    179:2    0      1G  0 part
└─mmcblk0p4    179:3    0    512M  0 part
mmcblk0boot0   179:256  0      4M  1 disk
mmcblk0boot1   179:512  0      4M  1 disk

He subsequently added:

I'm intending to use front-left USB 2.0 port to add Sonoff CC2652P Zigbee adapter for HA/Z2M IoT connectivity.

...and followed this up with a photo of his 3040 with the wireless module added to the front USB2 port.

Wyse 3040 with USB SSD and WiFi

 


Any comments? email me. Added October 2024