New boot drive?

[itsryan]

Long story short my boot usb died. I did not mirror it so now I need a new boot drive.
I don't use a hba card I have 6 sata ports on my motherboard all used by my zpool drives. I don't want to get another USB and have it last 16 months and have to do this all over again so I'm looking to upgrade to a ssd. Here is my plan.

Buy new ssd Samsung 860 with 120gb is on sale so I think that. I will also get a USB to sata cable
StarTech.com SATA to USB Cable - USB 3.0 to 2.5” SATA III Hard Drive Adapter - External Converter for SSD/HDD Data Transfer (USB3S2SAT3CB) https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B00HJZJI84/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_IrkOCbQPMQ07H as a example.

The question is this a good idea and will this work?

EDIT:
So far I got the new ssd and have a usb to sata cable connected to where my old usb stick was and the reinstall and the reload config went well. no problems yet.

 

[2nd-in-charge]

The question is this a good idea and will this work?

It'll work if you motherboard can boot from that Startech adapter.
Note that even though 860 EVO is more reliable than a USB stick, you'll still have no redundancy. In that sense, you might be actually better off with 2 usb drives (mirror this time!).
If you want a single boot SSD, you can get an Pci-e ssd (NVME). Most motherboards can boot from it, and m.2 pci-e cards are widely available and quite cheap. If you want to mirror, you can install two of those.
But I'd probably just get an HBA if I were you. Connect at least two of those 6 drives to the HBA and free up two SATA ports for 2 SATA SSD. Install FreeNAS on 2x Kingston A400 mirror. Done.
And if you want to expand your zpool later, you can add 6 more drives!

 

[Ericloewe]

In that sense, you might be actually better off with 2 usb drives (mirror this time!).

I highly doubt it. Reputable SSDs last forever in client machines. FreeNAS is a much easier workload.

 

[itsryan]

I am thinking of getting a hba but I am not ready to upgrade storage yet. But when I do I will get one. From what it sounds like I should be okay with the usb to sata cable. If it fails I will let you all know so you don't buy them on the same hardware as me.

 

[Evertb1]

I am thinking of getting a hba but I am not ready to upgrade storage yet.

Why would you need to wait for the upgrade of your storage to get a HBA? Switching your current storage drives to an HBA should be no problem at all. Those drives will be found by FreeNAS/ZFS without a problem. If you want to wait OK, you wait, but it's not needed.