WDLabs has produced some quirky and interesting storage solutions for the Raspberry Pi recently.

The idea is simple: WDLabs has built a custom version of Raspbian that boots to an external storage drive. This external storage space then acts as the primary drive, so you only have to manage one single storage space.

The full article can be found in The MagPi 59 and was written by Lucy Hattersley.

There are other bonuses to WDLabs’ software: you can install multiple instances of Raspbian OS alongside other OSes.

When WD bundles a 4GB microSD card with one of its large (250GB or 375GB) hard drives, the advantage is clear. You get a much bigger storage space than would be possible with microSD card technology. However, what we have here is a microSD card bundled with a SanDisk Cruzer 64GB USB drive, so things are a little muddier.

For example, you can pick up a SanDisk 64GB microSD card for around the same £20 price. You could keep a USB port free on your Raspberry Pi and get a more straightforward installation.

What you do get, however, is a high-quality microSD card and a high-quality USB drive. And USB drives are typically faster than microSD cards (which vary in read and write speed tremendously – this is why you should choose a Class 6 or Class 10 microSD card from a trusted brand, like SanDisk). Even so, we expected the USB thumb drive to be faster, and benchmarks didn’t let us down.

Benchmarks

We benchmarked the WD PiDrive Foundation Edition, USB Flash (sda) against an official 8GB Raspberry Pi microSD card (mmblk0).

As you can see below, the USB Flash read was marginally slower with cached reads, but almost a third faster in buffered disk reads. On balance, you are getting more speed for the same money.

/dev/sda

• Timing cached reads: 1118 MB in 2.00 seconds = 558.75 MB/sec
• Timing buffered disk reads: 100 MB in 3.01 seconds = 33.21 MB/sec

/dev/mmcblk0

• Timing cached reads: 1140 MB in 2.00 seconds = 570.02 MB/sec
• Timing buffered disk reads: 64 MB in 3.02 seconds = 21.19 MB/sec

Last word

4/5

The WD PiDrive Foundation Edition, USB Flash is a good setup for a media centre or retro games console. It offers fast read times and more storage than a stock card. While it's not quite as impressive as the other WD PiDrive offerings, it's still a useful piece of kit.