Boot device

[FlyingPersian]

Hi
Every couple months or so one of my boot devices (2 cheap Kingston USB sticks) dies. It's getting quite annoying because I always first have to find out which one it is, and then buy a new one and replace it. Is there anything you guys can recommend to use as replacement that is a little more reliable? Maybe even a SSD? Or a certain USB stick that doesn't die off as quickly?

 

[joeschmuck]

Your best bet is to use any small SSD. It doesn't matter which brand/model, the cheapest one you can find. I mean, dont' buy one with a 90 day warranty but you get the point. Size matters, get something small between 16GB and 120GB. When you buy a large SSD the system still formats the entire thing but it only partitions what it wants and the extra space is not usable so it's generally a waste of money. And you only need one SSD, mirroring the boot drive via FreeNAS is a waste of time in my opinion. Just keep a copy of your config file available in case you have to rebuild FreeNAS, something you should be doing anyway.

 

[Vito Reiter]

I bought 2xPNY ~120GB for a mirrored boot drive and they have lasted months so far. At $40 each, they seem to be well worth the investment over flash drives that will keep dying due to the constant load.

I used these to replace the 2.5" HDD's I was using when they each failed. If you're worried about using SATA ports that are available look into a USB 3.0 to SATA adapter (Seagate has the best one), it'll bottleneck a little bit of speed, but, 300MB/s for a boot drive is excellent anyway.

 

[nojohnny101]

I used mirrrored USB drives for a year but also got tired of the dying. This happened due to some verbose logging that was causing a lot of writes and thus premature failure. FYI I would send the USB drive back for warranty and sandisk would replace them.

I recently picked up one of these to replaced the mirrored USB drives after another one died a week ago. These were recommended by another veteran on here:
http://m.ebay.com/itm/Samsung-16GB-2-5-SATA-II-SSD-Solid-State-Drive-MMBRE16G5MSP-0VAD1-16-GB-/192106875854?_trkparms=aid%3D222007%26algo%3DSIC.MBE%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D20150519202348%26meid%3D2b50daac894744f5a33bb2a00c605992%26pid%3D100408%26rk%3D1%26rkt%3D25%26sd%3D351988163915&_trksid=p2056116.c100408.m2460

 

[FlyingPersian]

I bought 2xPNY ~120GB for a mirrored boot drive and they have lasted months so far. At $40 each, they seem to be well worth the investment over flash drives that will keep dying due to the constant load.

I used these to replace the 2.5" HDD's I was using when they each failed. If you're worried about using SATA ports that are available look into a USB 3.0 to SATA adapter (Seagate has the best one), it'll bottleneck a little bit of speed, but, 300MB/s for a boot drive is excellent anyway.

Yeah I think I'll go with a SSD with a USB 3.0 to SATA adapter. The cheapest ones I can find are around 30-40€ if I leave out those weird-looking ones without a case or anything and awful read/write stats.

I used mirrroed USB drives for a year but also great tired of the dying. This happened due to some verbose logging that were causing a lot of writes and premature failure. FYI I would send the, back for warranty and sandisk would replace them.

I recently picked up one of these to replaced the mirrored USB drives after another one died a week ago. These were recommended by another veteran on here:
http://m.ebay.com/itm/Samsung-16GB-2-5-SATA-II-SSD-Solid-State-Drive-MMBRE16G5MSP-0VAD1-16-GB-/192106875854?_trkparms=aid%3D222007%26algo%3DSIC.MBE%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D20150519202348%26meid%3D2b50daac894744f5a33bb2a00c605992%26pid%3D100408%26rk%3D1%26rkt%3D25%26sd%3D351988163915&_trksid=p2056116.c100408.m2460

The warranty thing is a good idea! Never actually thought about that. BUT, in all my wisdom I never kept the receipts and I'm not sure my reseller does warranty things, because it's a small store at my university run by students. Gotta check them out, I have like 2-3 broken sticks laying around.

This one for 20€ would be good, right?

https://ark.intel.com/products/66289/Intel-SSD-313-Series-20GB-2_5in-SATA-3Gbs-25nm-SLC

 

[Vito Reiter]

Yeah I think I'll go with a SSD with a USB 3.0 to SATA adapter. The cheapest ones I can find are around 30-40€ if I leave out those weird-looking ones without a case or anything and awful read/write stats.



The warrenty thing is a good idea! Never actually thought about that. BUT, in all my wisdom I never kept the receipts and I'm not sure my reseller does warenty things, because it's a small store at my university run by students. Gotta check them out, I have like 2-3 broken sticks laying around.

This one for 20€ would be good, right?

https://ark.intel.com/products/66289/Intel-SSD-313-Series-20GB-2_5in-SATA-3Gbs-25nm-SLC

Actually, that's perfect as long as you don't use too many plugins/things that will be saved to the boot device. 3-5 year warranty is exactly where you should look and the fact that it's so small and SLC will probably make boot times extremely short after your server posts, and if it's not a server board then it'll only be a couple seconds to restart if the thing ever goes down.

 

[joeschmuck]

Yeah I think I'll go with a SSD with a USB 3.0 to SATA adapter.

Why a USB to SATA adapter?

 

[Vito Reiter]

Why a USB to SATA adapter?

Save SATA ports, I used to do this when we were running things on a budget. As long as it's a good one everything is usually fine (Even though it is another single point of failure).

Edit: Also saves on SATA power as well.

 

[joeschmuck]

Okay, I'd just hook the SSD up to the SATA port if one was available but there is nothing wrong with your plan.

 

[Redcoat]

To the OP FlyingPersian: Do you have System Dataset, Syslog and Reporting Database saving to your boot device (which is the default)? If so you will have frequent writes which will wear out a USB stick. MY write activity dropped to zero (except when updating) when I switched the dataset to the pool and checked the other two boxes.

 

[FlyingPersian]

Actually, that's perfect as long as you don't use too many plugins/things that will be saved to the boot device. 3-5 year warranty is exactly where you should look and the fact that it's so small and SLC will probably make boot times extremely short after your server posts, and if it's not a server board then it'll only be a couple seconds to restart if the thing ever goes down.

Very good, I'll order that one then soon.

Why a USB to SATA adapter?

I only got 6 SATA slots and all of them are occupied. It's cheaper then using a PCIe card to add SATA plugs plus my X10SLM-F as a USB plug on itself, which I'm currently not using.

To the OP FlyingPersian: Do you have System Dataset, Syslog and Reporting Database saving to your boot device (which is the default)? If so you will have frequent writes which will wear out a USB stick. MY write activity dropped to zero (except when updating) when I switched the dataset to the pool and checked the other two boxes.

I never changed the settings, so they should be default. I still have an USB stick somewhere, and for now I'll replace the broken one and try out writing all that stuff to my pool instead of the boot device.

Edit: I checked the settings. The System Dataset Pool is set to "Data" (my storage pool), syslog is enabled and reporting database is disabled.

 

[Redcoat]

Edit: I checked the settings. The System Dataset Pool is set to "Data" (my storage pool), syslog is enabled and reporting database is disabled.

It was RDD (the reporting database) that was giving me large hourly writes. After I enabled that and put the data on the main pool (unchecked it puts it on the boot pool) the writes to the USB stick were eliminated and my stick consumption dropped to zero.