I'm thinking on buying a small Intel NUC or even a Zimaboard and plug it into a drive hub over USB/Thunderbolt. Will TrueNAS Scale support a thing like this? I'm really not worried about speed, it's a NAS for my home. The most I'll keep there are photos so I really don't need lots of speed at all.
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TrueNAS Scale works with drives over a USB/Thunderbolt connection?
- Thread starter fenugurod
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jgreco
Resident Grinch
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No, it will not. Please do not try, there are a variety of issues that will doom such attempts.
Please see the ever insightful @Arwen's resource on the topic. This also applies to Thunderbolt.
www.truenas.com
Please see the ever insightful @Arwen's resource on the topic. This also applies to Thunderbolt.
Why you should avoid USB attached drives for data pool disks
This subject has been coming up quite often in the last year or 2. Perhaps because of TrueNAS SCALE has brought forth some attention to TrueNAS in general and ZFS in specific. Please note that this is about USB attached storage for ZFS data...
www.truenas.com
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That is not quite accurate. M.2 PCIe NVMe, built in SATA, and some ASMedia SATA chips work well. And have been pointed out by the Grinch.
The big thing with many external desktop USB or Thunderbolt enclosures, is that they are not designed to run 24x7x365. Now you might say some ARE designed for 24x7x365. That may be true for other OSes and file systems.
ZFS on the other hand does things differently. Their are 2 differences. ZFS will bundle writes into transaction groups, then burst write the data. Slower interfaces, or more likely corner case bugs in firmware or logic can de-rail those writes. Rare, but it happens. And it might not happen for months or years. Though when it happens, could be data loss.
The more common problem would be twice a month ZFS scrubs which can hit the drives with continuous reads. Not just for hours, but could be all day. Or even multiple days. These USB external enclosures may not be able to handle the heat and get rid of it fast enough to prevent drive damage. Now will such an USB external enclosure fail on the first ZFS pool scrub? Of course not. But, over time, drive damage it is more likely than proper enclosures.
Your mileage may vary...
