Set usb flash drive as non rotational drive

Question

I'm trying to optimize the IO schedulers and to use a proper scheduler for rotational and for non rotational drives (different). When I run:

cat /sys/block/sd*/queue/rotational

I get:

1    <-- for sda
1    <-- for sdb

although sdb is the usb flash drive and it shouldn't be rotational.

$ udevadm info -a -n /dev/sda | grep queue
ATTRS{queue_depth}=="31"
ATTRS{queue_ramp_up_period}=="120000"
ATTRS{queue_type}=="simple"

$ udevadm info -a -n /dev/sdb | grep queue
ATTRS{queue_depth}=="1"
ATTRS{queue_type}=="none"

so there is no such attribute as:

ATTR{queue/rotational}=="0" or ...=="1"

Answer 1

Run hdparm -I for each of your disks:

hdparm -I /dev/sda
hdparm -I /dev/sdb

If the output of the hdparm -I line includes a line like:

Nominal Media Rotation Rate: Solid State Device

...then, and only then will the /sys/block/sd*/queue/rotational attribute be set to 0.

If your USB flash drive is USB2, any scheduler-based optimizations are likely going to be overwhelmed by the USB protocol inefficiency. Only worry about this if you have an actual USB3 SuperSpeed drive.