USB Boot Disk?

[jcat4]

I was reading DrKK's "Guide: How much will a proper home FreeNAS setup cost me?" sticky post in this group, and I see that he brought up using a low-profile USB stick as a boot drive? Did I read that correctly?
https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...ll-a-proper-home-freenas-setup-cost-me.28936/


If so, is that not a no-no due to reduced read/write speeds over USB compared to SATA or the like? Is it really not that big of a deal?

EDIT: I was unsure if I should have created this thread in an installation or hardware discussion portion of the forum or not, but I figured to post here since the thread I'm questioning is a locked sticky in this group. Please let me know if this is wrong and I need to post elsewhere.

 

[Spearfoot]

I was reading DrKK's "Guide: How much will a proper home FreeNAS setup cost me?" sticky post in this group, and I see that he brought up using a low-profile USB stick as a boot drive? Did I read that correctly?
https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...ll-a-proper-home-freenas-setup-cost-me.28936/


If so, is that not a no-no due to reduced read/write speeds over USB compared to SATA or the like? Is it really not that big of a deal?

EDIT: I was unsure if I should have created this thread in an installation or hardware discussion portion of the forum or not, but I figured to post here since the thread I'm questioning is a locked sticky in this group. Please let me know if this is wrong and I need to post elsewhere.

Welcome to the forums!

It's quite common to boot FreeNAS from a USB stick. The Sandisk Cruzer Fit USB 2.0 16GB model is a good choice as they are durable and FreeNAS doesn't need USB 3.0 capabilities.

There are issues with USB drives failing -- they're simply not as durable as SSD or HDD disks -- so it's best to locate the system dataset on your pool (using System->System Dataset on the WebGUI) to reduce wear-and-tear on the drive.

Overall, it's better to use a small SSD for your boot device if you have the spare SATA port to do so, and even better to use two SSD (or USB) drives and instruct FreeNAS to use them both in a mirrored installation when you install it.

 

[jcat4]

Welcome to the forums!

It's quite common to boot FreeNAS from a USB stick. The Sandisk Cruzer Fit USB 2.0 16GB model is a good choice as they are durable and FreeNAS doesn't need USB 3.0 capabilities.

There are issues with USB drives failing -- they're simply not as durable as SSD or HDD disks -- so it's best to locate the system dataset on your pool (using System->System Dataset on the WebGUI) to reduce wear-and-tear on the drive.

Overall, it's better to use a small SSD for your boot device if you have the spare SATA port to do so, and even better to use two SSD (or USB) drives and instruct FreeNAS to use them both in a mirrored installation when you install it.

Is it really worth booting from an SSD? I know it's hard to quantify, but how much better is it to use mirrored SSDs over mirrored USB sticks? From what I'm gathering, speed and throughput apparently aren't a concern with the boot drive. One is significantly more expensive than the other, even using cheapo generic brand SSDs.

 

[diedrichg]

Durability

 

[Redcoat]

Is it really worth booting from an SSD? I know it's hard to quantify, but how much better is it to use mirrored SSDs over mirrored USB sticks? From what I'm gathering, speed and throughput apparently aren't a concern with the boot drive. One is significantly more expensive than the other, even using cheapo generic brand SSDs.

Over the past few months reports of failing USB drives seem to be very frequent, even those that have been "highly recommended" here such as that by @Spearfoot above and where his caution about the system dataset was being observed. I had the personal experience of loosing 8 of those in my backup server (4x2 mirrors) before I gave up and bought a used SSD on Ebay.
How much better is it to boot from an SSD? By all reports they are much more durable - this topic has been much discussed here and I recall no significant negatives. If you want to confirm, use the search function here and do some reading.

 

[danb35]

I know it's hard to quantify, but how much better is it to use mirrored SSDs over mirrored USB sticks?

IMO, mirrored SSDs are a waste--SSDs in general are much more reliable than USB sticks, and the consequences of boot device failure are minimal (do a fresh install to a new device, upload your saved config file, and off you go). The extra speed is nice, but doesn't come into play too often--most of the OS lives in RAM most of the time due to ZFS caching.

 

[jcat4]

Hmm... Alright. I actually have an SSD in my build right now, and I've run FreeNAS on it in the past. I attempted to reinstall last weekend but started getting funky errors that seemed to have something to do with trim stuff. I didn't know if my SSD is messed up or not, and googling didn't really help much. That post sparked my interest in a cheap replacement. Whenever I get home, I'll try and grab the specific specs on my machine and post the install logs in the installation sub-forums here to see what my options are, and if I need to make a replacement. Thanks, guys.

 

[Spearfoot]

Hmm... Alright. I actually have an SSD in my build right now, and I've run FreeNAS on it in the past. I attempted to reinstall last weekend but started getting funky errors that seemed to have something to do with trim stuff. I didn't know if my SSD is messed up or not, and googling didn't really help much. That post sparked my interest in a cheap replacement. Whenever I get home, I'll try and grab the specific specs on my machine and post the install logs in the installation sub-forums here to see what my options are, and if I need to make a replacement. Thanks, guys.

Yes, your system specs would be helpful... because the answer to your question "[Should I use a] USB Boot Disk?" is: "It depends." :)

It depends on your budget.

It depends on whether or not you have a free SATA port to use for booting from an SSD or HDD. If your system board only has 6 SATA ports and you're using all 6 to connect 6 hard drives... then booting from a USB disk is your only choice.

There's an ascending hierarchy of boot devices, ranging from (cheap, slow, less durable/reliable/redundant) to (expensive, fast, more durable/reliable/redundant):

• USB drive
• 2 x USB drives, mirrored
• HDD drive
• 2 x HDD drives, mirrored
• SSD drive
• 2 x SSD drives, mirrored
• RAID1 array of SSDs
• NVMe SSD drive
• ...etc...

A FreeNAS boot device doesn't need much space or speed, so something like an Intel DC P3700 NVMe SSD is vast overkill and a waste of money. A RAID1 array is overkill for most people, but it's what I use (see 'my systems' below) because I'm running an All-in-One system: if my boot subsystem fails I have to re-install both ESXi and FreeNAS. Not a simple chore compared to the relatively easy recovery process of simply re-installing FreeNAS and uploading your configuration file.

As @danb35 pointed out above, a single SSD is more than satisfactory for most users.

An ideal system for most home users has 8 SATA ports; this allows for an SSD boot disk and 6 HDD drives in a RAIDZ2 array, leaving a spare SATA port for replacing disks if/when the need arises. Something like the Supermicro X11SSM-F fits the bill pretty nicely.

I wouldn't use a consumer SSD unless you've already got one one hand. You can pick up datacenter-quality 80GB and 120GB Intel S3500-series SSDs on eBay for less than $100. This is how I've acquired all of my S3500 and S3700 SSDs. For example, here's a 120GB S3500 for $75:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/222570736090

I've seen users post here on the forum about booting from 16GB and 32GB 'el cheapo' SSDs from eBay, but I personally wouldn't trust 'em.

Good luck!

 

[rs225]

I wonder if setting sync=disabled on freenas-boot would lower the fail rate?

 

[Z300M]

Over the past few months reports of failing USB drives seem to be very frequent, even those that have been "highly recommended" here such as that by @Spearfoot above and where his caution about the system dataset was being observed. I had the personal experience of loosing 8 of those in my backup server (4x2 mirrors) before I gave up and bought a used SSD on Ebay.
How much better is it to boot from an SSD? By all reports they are much more durable - this topic has been much discussed here and I recall no significant negatives. If you want to confirm, use the search function here and do some reading.

I used mirrored SanDisk Cruzer Fit USB drives for a while, but they did not seem to work very well (no longer remember the precise problem), and I'm now using a 120GB SSD; no problems with that.

 

[JackShine]

I would never use a USB drive again, for booting.

Its not only the architecture of the USB stick itself, the interface is not designed for O/S boot.

 

[tvsjr]

Ditto... small SSD or SATADOM.