Looking for a 2TB External SSD That Actually Works with Umbrel Home – Need Recommendations

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I recently went through a frustrating experience trying to expand my Umbrel Home (512GB) with a SanDisk Extreme Portable V2 (2TB). Long story short: it was a nightmare. The drive works perfectly on Windows and Ubuntu, but on Umbrel OS it caused constant Input/output errors, USB disconnections, and kernel timeouts. After contacting SanDisk support, they confirmed their drives aren’t officially tested on Linux and advised me to return it.

Which specific model are you using? (Brand, model, interface – e.g., Samsung T7, Crucial X8, WD My Passport, etc.).

Thanks in advance for your help!

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IMO, any of the Samsung external 2TB should work. It needs to be a solid-state drive (SSD). Again, IMO, a spinning drive is too slow and prone to “errors” for what you are trying to achieve.

Samsung T7.

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I have buoght a SanDisk Extreme Portable V2, 2TB, NVMe, USB 3.2 Gen 2 but a got:

  1. Mounting Failures: The drive is detected (lsblk shows /dev/sda), but any attempt to access it results in Input/output error.

  2. Kernel USB Errors: The Umbrel system logs are filled with critical USB errors, indicating the connection is dropping:

    text

    xhci_hcd: Timeout while waiting for setup device command
usb 4-1: device not accepting address, error -62
usb usb4-port1: unable to enumerate USB device

  3. Inconsistent Behavior: The drive name changes (e.g., from sda to sdb), and the system eventually loses the device completely, requiring a physical reconnect.

I contacted SanDisk support, and they confirmed the firmware is up-to-date, but they have never tested this ssd on linux and suggested me to buy another brend knowing it works on linux.

For that reason I’m looking for someone has expanded Umbrela Home with an external SSD without any problem.

4

What about upgrading the m.2 to 2TB? Clone it, then change expand the drive.

5

What is it? You mean buy another Umbrela Home? I’ve got an Umbrela Home 512gb and I’d like to create a BTC node and I need 2Tb for download the whole blockchain.

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I had similar experience trying to run Bitcoin Core on Umbrel OS on a Pi5 16gb for the past months. First I tried a cheaper 2Tb SSD Netac N3000 that was listed has compatible, but I had constant crashes of the OS because of constant write errors (running a node can be really demanding). Returned that SSD, tried another one from SanDisk 2Tb and had the same issue… returned it. After that I tried one of my used Samsung 990 Pro that I use for backups and it worked flawlessly for 15 days. Then I bought a new Crucial P310 2Tb and it’s also working well after a few command lines on the Ssh to run it Gen 3 instead of Gen 4 and a few preventive crash commands.

I activated Watchdog to force a restart if any issue happens, preventing the crash/freeze

Watchdog

bash

# Install watchdog
sudo apt update
sudo apt install watchdog

# Confi
sudo nano /etc/watchdog.conf
```

watchdog-device = /dev/watchdog
watchdog-timeout = 15
max-load-1 = 24
min-memory = 1

Ativate:

bash

sudo systemctl enable watchdog
sudo systemctl start watchdog

Hope it helps

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Thanks a lot for your help. I’ve ordered SanDisk T7 2tb. I Hope it’ll work.

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I bought an Umbrel Go about two months ago. In addition to using it as a personal server, I wanted to use it with Emby as a multimedia server. For that purpose, I bought a 2TB NVMe drive. When I connected it to the USB port of the Umbrel Go, it was not recognized. I then tried another 1TB drive, which was recognized, but it produced write errors and kept appearing and disappearing constantly.

After some research, I found the solution. Apparently, the USB ports on the Umbrel Go do not provide enough power to properly run external drives. I bought a hub that allows external power input, connected it to the Umbrel Go, and then connected the drives—both the 2TB and the 1TB—to the hub.

SURPRISE!! It works correctly.

Here is the link to Amazon Spain for the device I bought.

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