FreeNAS dies after a few hours

[Redcoat]

The thing I saw when trying to use USB is that the interface would periodically reset under high, sustained transfer and that wold cause the drive to suddenly 'disappear'. FreeNAS would not handle that well and would crash.

I had this same experience with a 3TB WD Mybook and my FreeNAS Mini - that's what convinced me to get a backup FreeNAS box (that I could also use for learning).

 

[giftedhamster]

The thing I saw when trying to use USB is that the interface would periodically reset under high, sustained transfer and that wold cause the drive to suddenly 'disappear'. FreeNAS would not handle that well and would crash. I tried several times to make this work and finally gave up on it because of the crashes. I didn't want the USB drive to cause damage to the data in my FreeNAS system. That is why I connected my backup drive to a different interface. I first went with plugging the drive into a SATA port and that worked fine, but when I had more data than would fit on one drive I went to a pool of drives and connected them to the SAS controller. It has evolved over the years. I don't use USB for anything on my FreeNAS system.

This is very interesting. I've been having a similar problem to the OP for several months now. I've been trying to get all of my data backed up to Google Drive, but the freezes have become so frequent that I can't backup my largest files. I, too, have a USB device that I'm using as a mirror for my boot device. I'm going to remove that device and see if this clears things up.

 

[Rob235]

I’ve been having the same problem on my system and I think i’ve found the problem for mine.

The Boot drive i’m using is two Sandsk Cruzer Fit which is a USB3 device and I have been using them on USB3 ports. Since moving them to USB2 ports the system has been stable for 24 hours.

 

[Chris Moore]

I’ve been having the same problem on my system and I think i’ve found the problem for mine.

The Boot drive i’m using is two Sandsk Cruzer Fit which is a USB3 device and I have been using them on USB3 ports. Since moving them to USB2 ports the system has been stable for 24 hours.

I would have thought that this was solved by now, but when USB3 controllers first started showing up on system boards, we had a rash of failures associated to them. It was decided at the time that the driver for USB3 simply wasn't stable and only USB2 should be used. We are two versions of FreeBSD later and I would have expected the driver support to be better, but it may simply be a timing issue that can't be overcome when trying to maintain a mirror on USB3. The thing about how USB works is that it actually only addresses one device at a time; it just switches which device it is accessing, from one device to the next. I am guessing, based on what you are saying, that we need to specify USB2 for boot media, if USB is used at all.

 

[giftedhamster]

I’ve been having the same problem on my system and I think i’ve found the problem for mine.

The Boot drive i’m using is two Sandsk Cruzer Fit which is a USB3 device and I have been using them on USB3 ports. Since moving them to USB2 ports the system has been stable for 24 hours.

I switched mine to USB2 ports on Friday and it was stable until yesterday afternoon, at which point it froze again.

 

[fwnklr]

Any new developments in this matter? If a solution has been found in the meantime I would be very happy to receive some information since it seems I am having the same issue :(

 

[Chris Moore]

Any new developments in this matter? If a solution has been found in the meantime I would be very happy to receive some information since it seems I am having the same issue :(

You are trying to backup your NAS to a external USB drive?

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I537 using Tapatalk

 

[fwnklr]

You are trying to backup your NAS to a external USB drive?

Well.. I am not sure to answer with Yes or No.
I have a redundant boot drive. Two identical usb memory sticks (SanDisk 16 GB) in a zfs mirror.
No further backups active.

 

[Chris Moore]

Well.. I am not sure to answer with Yes or No.
I have a redundant boot drive. Two identical usb memory sticks (SanDisk 16 GB) in a zfs mirror.
No further backups active.

Perhaps you misunderstand the nature of the problem here and your situation is not at all the same. It would be best if you started your own thread and fully explain your problem so someone might help you with it.
Also, you might want to look at this first because it tells about some of the standard information we will need on your configuration to be able to figure out what the problem is:

Updated Forum Rules 4/11/17
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/updated-forum-rules-4-11-17.45124/