USB2 automount (HDD) is hiccuping on Pi4
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I have an existing auto-mount with an USB2 WD Elements 2.5 drive powered by a USB hub that works perfectly fine with my pi3. I bought a pi4, thinking I can just slap it in and be golden, but I'm getting bad pauses when it goes to read the disk. This is very noticeable in the "Retropie" menu in emulation station (which is stored with the auto-mount), I will press a button, and 5 seconds later the selection has jumped to the bottom. PSX games will freeze and the character will get stuck with the last button pressed (running into a corner usually). Speed tests directly on the pi show 30/30MB/s, which matches my PC, and swapping back the pi3 goes back to normal operation.
So far, I've tried:
creating a new retropie-mount (still sticks on retropie menu without loading any games)
reformating drive from NTFS to FAT32 (seems like it's happening less but still happening)
adding the "fix" for USB3 to SATA issues (worth a try but didn't help)
using a very fast USB3 thumbdrive (100/100MB/s) (no problems, but don't know if it is because it's not SATA or that it's USB3/fast)
using a "fresh" image on another pi4 I picked up (still has the same problem) -
I think I figured it out, as embarrassingly as it seems, pretty sure it's a fault with the USB-C charger I'm using with the pi4. Swapped it out for the pi3 charger that is known stable and slapped a USB-micro-to-C adapter and all seems well. I don't know if it was a higher voltage back feeding over the powered USB hub causing an issue with the HDD of if it is just an unstable power supply causing a hangup somewhere. It had almost all good reviews on Amazon and it looked good in theory.
I looked through the logs and I couldn't find anything prevalent and I never received any lightning bolt warnings. I have a fan and clock circuit hanging on the GPIO (same I had on pi3), so you'd think that would eat any over-voltage. Oh well, glad it's fixed!
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Correction: It was marketed as a proper power supply, but without a USB-C tester, can't verify if it's a charger or a power supply.
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I realized I can use my USB2-A meter to test the output from the USB2 ports. Problematic PSU causes it to have 5.3V and the better one has 5.1V. Hopefully it helps anyone else having problems with a stronger PSU.
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