How do I ensure USB stick quality?

[toolforger]

My FreeNAS is running off a single no-name USB stick, and I want to follow the advice that two high-quality USB sticks would improve reliability.

However, I have no idea how to make sure that the sticks I got are really high-quality. Is there a way to direct test this, or do I have to rely on hearsay?

How do I notice if a USB stick is starting to degrade? What will I see once it dies?

Are data rates relevant?

 

[toolforger]

Brands with good ratings in online stores around here seem to be:
- SanDisk
- Verbatim
- Intenso
I'd still prefer to measure quality directly, but if that's impossible, a list of good brands would be nice.
I want to buy two different sticks so they don't fail at the same time. I am aware of potential size differences, I'll just install on the smaller one and mirror to the second.

 

[garm]

Boot devices are volatile, some will give you more hours then others, that’s it.

There is no s.m.a.r.t protocol or anything in the USB standard. What you can do is write them full of zeros (dd if=/dev/zero ..) if you want to know the state after shipping. ZFS will take care of the state during ops.

Personally I run small high quality brand sticks in external ports, and something with a bit more thermal quality when there are internal ports available.

 

[Jailer]

USB drives are a crap shoot at best. If you want reliability use a ssd as your boot device.

 

[Chris Moore]

I stopped using USB sticks after I had two fail on me in less than a year. The first was a SanDisk and the second was a Verbatim. USB sticks are just not designed to work in the way that FreeNAS uses them when they are used as a boot pool.

The thing I went to and have been using for over a year and a half with no complaints, is 40GB laptop hard drives. I was able to find some "old stock" drives that had not been used at all when I got them and they have run 24x7 for all this time with no errors of any kind. I use a mirrored pair in each of my three servers. They are great because you can use the SMART tests and monitoring on them just like any regular hard drive.

 

[toolforger]

Hmm... I could repurpose the unused optical drive slot for the SSD, but I don't see a way to add a second SSD for redundancy.
I could use PCIe slot-in SSDs, there are two unused socket on the motherboard. They'd be more expensive though, the SSD would start to amortize after the fourth USB is gone.
Oh, and there's a microSD slot in the system. How's that for reliability?

 

[Jailer]

Oh, and there's a microSD slot in the system. How's that for reliability?

Not much better than usb. All flash devices have a finite write life and that write life is generally low for usb flash drives as well as microSD.

 

[Chris Moore]

I could use PCIe slot-in SSDs, there are two unused socket on the motherboard. They'd be more expensive though, the SSD would start to amortize after the fourth USB is gone.

If you get something like this:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-32GB...1GN-SATA2-Solid-Sate-Drive-6099A/311999353490
They have a lot of endurance and even though they are used, they have a lot of life remaining. They are almost as inexpensive as USB drives and will last for years. I use this type of drive in all my Linux system.
If you want to look at the possibility of a spinning disk, these are very good:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/TOSHIBA-40...ard-Disk-Drive-Laptop-Festplatte/263220335820
I have been using mirrored sets of these in my FreeNAS systems for over a year now and not even a bad sector much less anything that even makes me concerned about their health. They are designed for the full read write activity of being the boot drive of an OS and FreeNAS does not benefit from a fast boot drive.

 

[Redcoat]

but I don't see a way to add a second SSD for redundancy.

Given the reliability of SSD's, perhaps you could consider a single SSD as many of us have, also ensuring that you always have a copy or two of your config file.

 

[Chris Moore]

Here is another option:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/16GB-1-8in...-SATA-Connectors-Free-Cable-Set-/311738494318
Plenty big enough capacity wise and they are super small so you can tuck them in somewhere.

 

[joeschmuck]

Hmm... I could repurpose the unused optical drive slot for the SSD, but I don't see a way to add a second SSD for redundancy.

With a single SSD as the boot device you do not need redundancy. All you need to do is keep a recent copy of your FreeNAS configuration file (something you should already be doing) and you can easily restore your system should the SSD fail.

Just a quick bit of history... The only reason mirrored boot devices came into existance for FreeNAS was because the USB Flash drives were being written to too much which caused them to have a premature death. The knee jerk reaction was mirrored boot devices. At the time a SSD was not cheap so this was the most cost effective way to go. Times have changed and you can get any cheap SSD and have a significantly more reliable boot device.

Now if you do want to use a USB Flash Drive and you want a reliable one then I'd suggest this device, I have had one for many many years and it's a running all the time in my computer, it's a work horse but you pay the price for it: Super Talent 64GB Express RAM Cache USB 3.0 Flash Drive (ST3U64ERS-64GB) and since these are no longer made as far as I know, the price is high. Super Talent makes other models but I can't speak to if they are reliable like the unit I have. If you want reliable then you need to pay for it when it comes to USB Flash media.

 

[toolforger]

Given the recommendation of 32 GB for the boot device (for a vanilla share server), my German market review site gives me these recommendations:
2 USB 2.0 Sticks, <24mm (can't plug it inside so it shouldn't stick out too much): starting at 20 EUR
One SSD drive, 30-32 GB: starting at 34 EUR, e.g. https://geizhals.de/transcend-ssd370-32gb-ts32gssd370-a1121843.html (list was https://geizhals.de/?cat=hdssd&xf=2028_32~252_30~4830_1 , a review says there's a newer Transcend SSD370S which comes at roughly the same price and with a metal casing)

Not really sure whether I should go the single-SSD route. Sure they're reliable as hell, OTOH if it should fail I get outage of a pretty critical system. OT3H the mainboard may fail, or the power supply. OT4H that's a ProLiant Gen8, so that's pretty solid already.
How reliable would you people rate that Transcend SSD370/SSD370S, e.g. when compared to the other ProLiant components?

 

[Jailer]

Keep a USB drive on hand and make sure you have copies of your backup. If the SSD fails use the usb drive until you can replace the SSD.

 

[toolforger]

Keep a USB drive on hand and make sure you have copies of your backup. If the SSD fails use the usb drive until you can replace the SSD.

Mmm... right. I had to think a bit to understand what exactly your recommendation is

My overall plan has been to schedule a regular off-site backup (to a data center but that's out of scope here).
With that general setup, it should be easy to backup the configuration and install to a USB. When (if) the SSD fails, I can pull the config from the off-site backup and get the FreeNAS back to working order until the replacement SSD arrives.
Does that sound good?

 

[joeschmuck]

Mmm... right. I had to think a bit to understand what exactly your recommendation is :)

My overall plan has been to schedule a regular off-site backup (to a data center but that's out of scope here).
With that general setup, it should be easy to backup the configuration and install to a USB. When (if) the SSD fails, I can pull the config from the off-site backup and get the FreeNAS back to working order until the replacement SSD arrives.
Does that sound good?

That sounds good, just ensure that you can get to your off-site stored configuration file.

Sure they're reliable as hell, OTOH if it should fail I get outage of a pretty critical system.

If this is a critical system and you really need this thing to run 24/7 then the only true way to have mirrored boot devices which will work for a failure is to use a true RAID card that will handle a drive failure and boot the device should one of the drives fail. I've done this once before and it worked like a champ but since my system is for home use I determined that I did not need this extra RAID card in my system and now I'm down to a single boot SSD device. Don't confuse this with other HBA cards used for the storage drives.

 

[danb35]

Does that sound good?

It should work. Keep in mind that your .system dataset will be stored on your pool, and will contain backups of your config--I believe a copy is made every time you change the configuration. You can find it on your live system at /var/db/system/configs-(longhexnumber)/.

 

[toolforger]

Ah, good to know, thanks.
This is solved then, I'll go for an SSD somewhere before the test phase ends. Proceeding with other questions

 

[Glorious1]

SSDs are great, but you can't beat the convenience of a USB port - don't have to have a spare SATA port or power line.

Do they make devices with SSD-type media in a thumb drive form? Is this one? Pretty pricey, but the right idea if so. They say "The SanDisk Extreme PRO USB 3.1 Solid State Flash Drive delivers the performance, capacity, and reliability of an SSD in ultimate portability of a USB flash drive." 128 GB version is $76 on Amazon.

 

[toolforger]

It's a pretty normal stick with a bit of fancy aluminium. Great for mechanical durability, but the issue with USB is Flash durability, and I see nothing in the ad that indicates anything out of the orginary for that.

If convenience is a factor, I wouldn't go for an externally-pluggable stick anyway. It's too easy to bend it and break the connector (and the aluminium casing won't help you there, particularly since it's such a long stick).
Also, it's pretty inconvenient if the stick can't tell you about impending failure because USB does not offer SMART reporting to the OS I'm told.

I.e. I prefer something internal.
Either with a SATA cable, or (even better) something that I can push into a PCIe slot. I'm currently exploring options; price points seem okay with NVMe, I have to figure out whether a ProLiant Gen8 can boot from it. (UPDATE: NVMe boot is highlighted as a new feature for Gen9, so it's unlikely a Gen8 can do it.)

 

[rs225]

Isn't it also the case that if you are using encryption (which you shouldn't) that you also need to separately store backup of the encryption keys? They aren't captured in the configuration?