I have an Orange Pi Plus 2E I'm using as a cheap desktop computer/kiosk.  I want to run Armbian on eMMC but use an SD card for file storage.

 

If I boot off the eMMC, then insert an SD card (formatted as ext4) after boot, the system works well.  But if I boot off the eMMC with the SD storage card in the card slot at boot, the CPU load increases and performance lags.

 

Here's the output of armbianmonitor without an SD card, with two Firefox windows and a terminal window open while streaming audio using Audacious:

Time        CPU    load %cpu %sys %usr %nice %io %irq   CPU  C.St.

06:18:26: 1296MHz  1.10  25%   3%  21%   0%   0%   0% 54.1°C  0/9
06:18:31: 1296MHz  1.01  22%   2%  19%   0%   0%   0% 53.8°C  0/9
06:18:36: 1296MHz  0.93  21%   1%  19%   0%   0%   0% 53.8°C  0/9
06:18:41: 1296MHz  0.86  21%   2%  18%   0%   0%   0% 54.7°C  0/9
06:18:46: 1296MHz  0.79  24%   2%  21%   0%   0%   0% 53.6°C  0/9
06:18:51: 1296MHz  0.80  26%   1%  23%   0%   0%   0% 57.8°C  0/9
06:18:56: 1296MHz  0.74  23%   2%  21%   0%   0%   0% 55.9°C  0/9
06:19:01: 1296MHz  0.68  22%   2%  19%   0%   0%   0% 54.8°C  0/9

 

Here's the results running on eMMC, with the data SD card installed at boot, running under identical conditions:

 

Time        CPU    load %cpu %sys %usr %nice %io %irq   CPU  C.St.

06:27:47: 1296MHz  2.33  87%  14%  72%   0%   0%   0% 64.3°C  0/9
06:27:52: 1296MHz  2.38  87%  10%  76%   0%   0%   0% 62.9°C  0/9
06:27:57: 1296MHz  2.35  79%   8%  70%   0%   0%   0% 63.2°C  0/9
06:28:03: 1296MHz  2.41  80%   8%  71%   0%   0%   0% 64.5°C  0/9
06:28:08: 1296MHz  2.12  77%   7%  69%   0%   0%   0% 65.0°C  0/9
06:28:14: 1296MHz  2.03  77%   9%  67%   0%   0%   0% 61.3°C  0/9
06:28:19: 1296MHz  2.18  75%   7%  67%   0%   0%   0% 63.8°C  0/9
06:28:25: 1296MHz  2.17  75%   9%  65%   0%   0%   0% 65.5°C  1/9

The load and CPU usage is 3X higher and temperature is 10C higher.  This is even without the SD card mounted!

 

I get similar results using the eMMC on an Orange Pi PC+, too.

 

If you don't provide information what's utilizing the CPU how should anyone here help you or at least get an idea what's going on? Check and provide 'htop' and 'armbianmonitor -u' output.

Sorry, attached is the output from armbian-hardware-monitor.log.  The first half is with the SD card in the board's card slot, the second half is with it in a USB adapter.  It's a Samsung EVO 16 GB card.

 

I checked htop but did not see anything unusual.  The processes consuming the most CPU were the same in both cases.

 

I had a PNY 32 GB card I wasn't using, so today I reformatted it and tried using it instead.   This card worked normally, so apparently the problem is related to this particular SD card.

armbian-hardware-monitor.log