Should change my OS drive from consumer grade to enterprise grade SSD?

[traderjay]

Hey all - I spent quite a bit of time setting up my first FreeNAS and its now working beautifully. The system however is running off a lightly used Corsair X128 consumer grade SSD and it is the single point of failure. I am debating if I should change the SSD to an enterprise grade drive for long term reliability? Below is my current SMART Attribute for the OS drive:

Code:

[root@freenas] ~# smartctl -a /dev/ada7
smartctl 6.3 2014-07-26 r3976 [FreeBSD 9.3-RELEASE-p26 amd64] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-14, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Device Model:     Corsair CMFSSD-128D1
Serial Number:    3P51TNV7ZGX065S55F86
Firmware Version: 2.0
User Capacity:    128,035,676,160 bytes [128 GB]
Sector Size:      512 bytes logical/physical
Rotation Rate:    Solid State Device
Device is:        Not in smartctl database [for details use: -P showall]
ATA Version is:   ATA8-ACS (minor revision not indicated)
Local Time is:    Fri Oct 23 17:25:58 2015 EDT
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

General SMART Values:
Offline data collection status:  (0x00) Offline data collection activity
                                        was never started.
                                        Auto Offline Data Collection: Disabled.
Self-test execution status:      (   0) The previous self-test routine completed
                                        without error or no self-test has ever
                                        been run.
Total time to complete Offline
data collection:                (    0) seconds.
Offline data collection
capabilities:                    (0x1d) SMART execute Offline immediate.
                                        No Auto Offline data collection support.
                                        Abort Offline collection upon new
                                        command.
                                        Offline surface scan supported.
                                        Self-test supported.
                                        No Conveyance Self-test supported.
                                        No Selective Self-test supported.
SMART capabilities:            (0x0003) Saves SMART data before entering
                                        power-saving mode.
                                        Supports SMART auto save timer.
Error logging capability:        (0x00) Error logging NOT supported.
                                        General Purpose Logging supported.
Short self-test routine
recommended polling time:        (   0) minutes.
Extended self-test routine
recommended polling time:        (   0) minutes.

SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x0000   006   000   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0000   153   050   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0000   215   000   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
184 End-to-End_Error        0x0000   019   000   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
195 Hardware_ECC_Recovered  0x0000   001   000   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0000   000   000   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0000   000   000   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0000   159   103   000    Old_age   Offline      -       68016
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x0000   115   145   000    Old_age   Offline      -       35406
200 Unknown_SSD_Attribute   0x0000   105   220   000    Old_age   Offline      -       951
201 Unknown_SSD_Attribute   0x0000   152   098   000    Old_age   Offline      -       504
202 Unknown_SSD_Attribute   0x0000   093   187   000    Old_age   Offline      -       42
203 Run_Out_Cancel          0x0000   007   053   000    Old_age   Offline      -       40
204 Soft_ECC_Correction     0x0000   000   000   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
205 Thermal_Asperity_Rate   0x0000   016   039   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
206 Unknown_SSD_Attribute   0x0000   001   000   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
207 Unknown_SSD_Attribute   0x0000   069   071   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
208 Unknown_SSD_Attribute   0x0000   066   002   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
209 Unknown_SSD_Attribute   0x0000   095   000   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
211 Unknown_Attribute       0x0000   000   000   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
212 Unknown_Attribute       0x0000   000   000   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
213 Unknown_Attribute       0x0000   000   000   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0

Warning! SMART ATA Error Log Structure error: invalid SMART checksum.
SMART Error Log Version: 1
No Errors Logged

Warning! SMART Self-Test Log Structure error: invalid SMART checksum.
SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
No self-tests have been logged.  [To run self-tests, use: smartctl -t]

Selective Self-tests/Logging not supported

 

[nightshade00013]

You could, but there is not much use of the actual OS drive beyond booting or a change in the configuration. So little use to begin with in read or write, so very little wear and tear on the flash memory. It would see a harder life in a desktop and still last quite a while.

Most people tend to use mirrored drives be it USB flash drives (the way I do it), sataDOM's, or ssd's. I don't know if you can mirror the os drive after it's all been set up but I wouldn't be surprised if it could. If you're worried getting a second drive to mirror the first one would probably be the best step. Worst case you make a backup of your config and set everything back up on the mirrored drives and then import the config. And no need to splurge on an enterprise grade drive unless you have the money to burn. I think two 16GB flash drives can be had for less than 20.00 with shipping.

 

[Bidule0hm]

First things first: backup your config file. That way if the boot drive has a problem you can reinstall and import the config and you're good to go ;)

To answer the question: the SSDs are very reliable when used as a boot drive because they don't see a lot of writes so I wouldn't worry at all, especially since you can easily reinstall the system if anything happens.

I don't know if you can mirror the os drive after it's all been set up but I wouldn't be surprised if it could.

Yes you can, see how to in the manual :)

 

[traderjay]

Thank you all for the quick response! I'll backup the config file and keep it in a safe place. Now I did change the System dataset pool to my boot SSD and will that be a problem? Or should I point it to one of my Zpools?

 

[Bidule0hm]

I wouldn't put the .system dataset on a pool without redundancy.

 

[traderjay]

I wouldn't put the .system dataset on a pool without redundancy.

Thanks for the tip! I guess I should just move it one of my RAIDZ2 arrays then?

 

[Bidule0hm]

Yep, that's what I recommend ;)

 

[Nick2253]

First things first: backup your config file. That way if the boot drive has a problem you can reinstall and import the config and you're good to go ;)

Let me go ahead and second this. If you have your config file, all else is secondary. You can to SSD, HDD, USB, etc., back-and-forth, and as long as you have your config file, you won't even notice a difference.