Boot Drive Recommendations

[nanodec]

Hey guys, any particular brands of flash drives you've had good success with?

I am currently utilizing a 16GB Kanguru thumb drive that just started throwing an error. It's been in production on this system for about two months... seems pretty quick that the thing is already starting to error...

Particular brands you've found pretty stable?

Thanks all

=D

 

[gpsguy]

I've had good luck with Patriot. Sandisk is popular.

If you are running FreeNAS 9.3, consider buying a matched pair and mirroring them.

btw, the cool kids are now using SATA DOM's (disk on module).

 

[DrKK]

The only thumb drive I have used in the past year to never throw any errors for me on any builds that I have done is the Sandisk Cruzer Fit 2.0, which I chose initially because it is flush with the port, but as it happens, it also turned out to be reliable.

 

[Z300M]

The only thumb drive I have used in the past year to never throw any errors for me on any builds that I have done is the Sandisk Cruzer Fit 2.0, which I chose initially because it is flush with the port, but as it happens, it also turned out to be reliable.

I had problems with 8GB Cruzer Fit drives, but the 16GB ones are fine.

 

[anodos]

They're all crap to varying degrees. Get two and mirror them.

 

[Arwen]

About mirroring the boot drive. Do it, it's cheap insurance today.
Even 2 different, (reliable), brands to help reduce double disk
failure.

If you end up using SATA DOM, SuperMicro seems to make decent
ones.

But that does not mean you should ignore backing up your NAS
configuration file. I back it up to both my netbook and storage
pool, (which get's backed up externally).

 

[nanodec]

@Arwen - agreed. Once I settle on a replacement boot drive, I'm going to purchase two and mirror. I already have my configuration backed up; Once I had all of my settings finalized for this last build, I always copy the configuration.

It's weird about the Kanguru, my co-workers and I in IT all use them, and they have been great drives, hence my surprise that two months in, it started throwing checksum errors... not many mind you, only six... so i cleared the errors and am watching it like a hawk to see if it throws more...

 

[Arwen]

...
It's weird about the Kanguru, my co-workers and I in IT all use them, and they have been great drives, hence my surprise that two months in, it started throwing
checksum errors... not many mind you, only six... so i cleared the errors and am watching it like a hawk to see if it throws more...

One thing to consider about the Kanguru drives, is that they may actually be a bad brand and return bogus data occasionally, without reporting it as a read error.
But, with ZFS, (and BTRFS), checksumming, we actually now know if data returned by a storage read request, (spinning, Flash or RAM), is bad.

One of the ZFS developers experienced drive failures very early on in ZFS development, (before 2005 if I recall correctly). He thought his code was bad, but
eventually tracked it down to the disk path. Basically he was using bad hardware, but did not know it until he used ZFS checksumming. This is why I still use ZFS,
(and BTRFS for my netbook), even with a single disk pool. If my disk controller, cable or media is bad, I will at least know it.

 

[Sir.Robin]

On my physical FreeNAS, i've been running a Cruzer Fit for a couple of years. It recently died on me and i replaced it with another. That one also died shortly after. These were 8GB ones.
I am now running it on a Kingston 16GB DTSE9.

Contemplating switching it out with an old WD N1x 32GB SLC SSD i have no other use for...

 

[DataKeeper]

They're all crap to varying degrees. Get two and mirror them.

This.. These things are cheaply made and overpriced even at their fairly inexpensive costs. Without a doubt, hands down, order a half dozen run them mirrored and get the system installed on them all. Backup the config often and ensure the backups and off the system either on another PC, on your phone/tablet or sent via email. The Cruzer Fit drives seem to be the most often used but order a larger 32g or 64g chip. Larger flash drives are generally more forgiving.

If it were me I'd likely order 4-6 of the 32g Cruzer Fit drives up front and then order a couple more just to have up front. It was just mentioned that Sandisk (others have done this as well) changed the data size of one of their Cruzer Fit chips so ordering newer ones gives errors.

I like the DOMs myself but they are expensive.. again, order at least 32G and mirror them.