Is there a recommended list of USB thumb drives?

[kamakazi]

I just recently built my first FreeNAS box, haven't used it enough yet to have any likes or dislikes based on experience. However, I built it with a mirrored boot on 2 Dane Elec microSD drives in USB adapters that came with them. Built the system 3 days ago, spent a day and a half getting LACP working because I stupidly didn't have a VLAN on a trunk where it needed to be. All in all I have booted from these USB drives around 10 times. Moved the system into the rack yesterday and started copying from my old debian file server.

This morning had an alert, and one of the boot drives has crapped out. Glad I mirrored it. So I am looking for recommendations for reliable USB 2.0 thmb drives. Speed really is irrelevant, I hope to boot this thing a few times a year for important updates, so a 10 minute boot really doesn't bother me, I kind of expected that somewhere here I would find a flamewar involving USB drive brands and then a link to a cyberjock guide, but all I found from him was this:
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/booting-from-usb-stick-hangs.20579/#post-117979
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/booting-from-usb-stick-hangs.20579/#post-117979

where at the bottom of the thread he said:

I usually go for the cheapest drive that I trust. My "go-to" is a Corsair Voyager.

I would kinda like to go with a couple different brand drives, just hoping that variety will help insulate me from near simultaneous death.

Did I miss something?

 

[cyberjock]

Well, I use Corsair Voyagers and have had no problems despite about 20 years total operation between my friends and I. So those are my "go-to" because they are solid and work great for me.

I could have told you that the adapters were a fail waiting to happen. That's why the manual says something like "name brand USB sticks without adapters". If you are doing adapters they *will* fail.

 

[gpsguy]

Looks like cyberjock beat me to the answer again ... I was getting ready to say the same thing he said, in his last sentence.

That being said, I've had excellent luck with a Patriot Rage XT. Now discontinued, but have never had a problem with it. Still have an identical spare.

 

[Glorious1]

I use a SanDisk Cruzer Fit
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA12K1078659

It's incredible short, which is nice when you're going to leave it in the motherboard or the back. If you bump into it, you don't have any leverage to do any damage, and it doesn't get in the way. And it's only around $7, so you can have a handful with various boot environments and utilities.

 

[mjws00]

I have a ton of the SanDisk cruzers from Costco. Some other larger SanDisk units I don't know model on. All work great.

 

[Ericloewe]

I've had good luck with Toshiba, at least for these few months. I got three of the 16GB version to replace the "old" 8GB ones for 9.3.

More generally, SanDisks never gave me trouble. Lexar is Micron, so you'd expect them to be reliable, but I've found that the ones I've tried are always painfully slow.

Never tried Corsair (not readily available in Portugal, for some reason), but they do have a good reputation.

 

[Z300M]

If you have the space get a 2 Port USB Motherboard header adapter.

Since the USB lives inside the case I usually take a screwdriver and strip the USB down to the board. With that you'd have a mirrored boot disk if one of your USBs did fail.

Aha! I was going to ask about those adapters. So far, however, I haven't managed to mirror my boot drive: even brand-new and used-but-tested USB drives report write errors.

 

[Ericloewe]

The adapters are a good solution for additional internal USB drives, but I prefer the ones with cables, since they avoid the common problem with large-ish USB drives.

I bought two of the USB 3.0 variety, from Silverstone and already installed one (my desktop's chassis is from that period where USB 3.0 was a cool new feature for cases but there was no internal header for USB 3.0 yet, so I got one to connect the external cables to) - the only thing I'd like to point out is that USB 3.0 cables are rather thick and bend with difficulty, so adapters for USB 2.0 headers might be a better idea.

 

[Ericloewe]

That's the thing. The "Largeish" USB drives are just more plastic. If you take them apart the actual drive itself is rather small. Since it's living inside of the case I think it should be fine. (It's as 'exposed' as my RAM is).

Yeah, that's true, but I like keeping mine intact. Makes for more care-free handling.

 

[Ericloewe]

Why are you 'handling' your boot drives? My OpenWRT router has had the same 1GB stick in it for almost 4 years now. I expect the USB drives in my final FreeNAS setup to live the same life.

I'll be doing so in February, during the server's first major cleanup and update to 9.3. Judging by the failure rates we've been seeing since the move to 9.3 (though many were admittedly old drives), it won't be four years until I have to replace it.

Of course, it's trivial, but since I have plenty of room, I'm not going to spend my time opening the drives. Dusting the server is going to take long enough as it is...

 

[Z300M]

Aha! I was going to ask about those adapters. So far, however, I haven't managed to mirror my boot drive: even brand-new and used-but-tested USB drives report write errors.

I bought a generic version of one of those adapters on eBay -- works fine. I haven't yet tried again to mirror my boot drive.

 

[pschatz100]

Since I upgraded to my current Supermicro board, I've been using a Mushkin Atom series flash drive, plugged into the USB connector on the motherboard. Small and out of the way. No problems so far.

My take on flash drives is as follows:

1) All flash drives are unreliable, and they tend to fail when writing (as opposed to reading.) This is why people often notice flash drive problems after an update.

2) Better quality flash drives are less unreliable than cheap ones.

3) There is no particular brand of flash drive that reigns supreme when it comes to reliability.

4) At the first sign of any questionable performance, replace the flash drive. They do not last forever.

Believe it or not, I have had no problems with any flash drive for which read and write performance specs have been published. Perhaps the vendors use better components (or at least are more consistent in product testing.) So now, I never purchase one unless the specs are posted.

 

[DJABE]

My old NAS was running on a Transcend 2 GB USB drive (pretty much old nowadays), without any issue for a 2 years. So in my latest setup I had one newer Transcend JetFlash 1100 4GB laying around and used it. Mirror causes more problems than it prevents potential disaster with USB drives.. that's why you should always have config file backed up somewhere externally, and then reinstall the whole thing on a new drive in case of a failure.

 

[nick779]

Im using a $7.50 metal cased 16GB Kingston flash drive mirrored to a 16gb Cruzer Fit.

I had a new Cruzer glide that was DOA on USB 3.0 ports that I had to return to amazon though.

Eventually I want to upgrade to something maybe a little more robust, but for now these drives seem fine.

 

[indivision]

I've had a Patriot Tab USB 3 drive work great for a few months when plugged in to a USB 3 port. Had to do a clean re-install and decided to move it to a USB 2 port to avoid rumored compatibility issues with FreeBSD and USB 3. But, now I'm getting occasional I/O errors on the drive. Not sure if the drive is just bad or if there is some issue related to downgrading to USB 2 (or even something with the MB port)...

I wonder if instead of a recommended list of drives it would make more sense to have a list of "Drives that have failed for some users." As someone else pointed out, all USB drives/brands are capable of being faulty. But, a list of failed drives/brands might help track a pattern that merits avoiding.

 

[marbus90]

My old NAS was running on a Transcend 2 GB USB drive (pretty much old nowadays), without any issue for a 2 years. So in my latest setup I had one newer Transcend JetFlash 1100 4GB laying around and used it. Mirror causes more problems than it prevents potential disaster with USB drives.. that's why you should always have config file backed up somewhere externally, and then reinstall the whole thing on a new drive in case of a failure.

That's a new one for me. Mirroring _causes_ system downtimes compared to a single USB stick?

 

[DJABE]

I didn't said that. I've said that RAID on USB sticks cause problems, even if it should work fine. I've read somewhere good technical explanation why USB sticks are bad for a RAID environment, that's the whole point.
Backing up the whole configuration and re-installing is the way to go in a case of trouble, or the best 'manual mirror' you could have dd copy of the USB production stick onto another one...

 

[marbus90]

In fact, any USB devices are bad for anything RAID. Which includes external HDDs. Mirroring the bootstick is just a workaround for those who can't spare a SATA port for a DOM.

 

[indivision]

In what way is mirroring the drives bad for this case? I think it is obviously not stable enough for data protection. But, the OS isn't really data that needs to be protected.

Manually making backups doesn't seem like a good solution. At least for me, I am actively managing the server. Making adjustments, adding new plug-ins, etc. So, the manual backup would need constant updating. Mirroring seems like a good solution because the sticks cost next to nothing and its backing up your server updates as you go. The relative lack of stability of USB seems like a negligible concern since total loss of those drives isn't a big deal and it costs around $10 to replace a drive if needed. Maybe I am missing some factor?

Also, how is mirroring the boot drive a workaround for a SATA DOM? The SATA DOM would certainly perform better. But, it's still one drive that can go bad. If it does, your system is down until you replace it and re-install. If you have mirrored drives, the redundancy increases the chances that your system can keep running while you address one of the drives failing. That seems like a decent convenience to have for an extra $10.