What happens if the boot drive fails??

[Nightowl805]

I have seen some people talk about mirrored USB boot drives incase one fails. My understanding is the OS loads into memory. If it doesn't load is there any damage? Would it be as simple as obtaining a new USB drive with the latest version and restarting?

 

[Bidule0hm]

Yes, the data is on the HDDs, only the system is on the boot drive, so the data is safe even if the boot drive dies ;)

However you probably want to restore a backup of your configuration on a fresh install instead of restarting from zero so you need to backup it before of course :)

 

[danb35]

If the boot drive fails, your system won't (re)boot. Since 9.3 with the ZFS boot device, some of the boot environment is running from that boot device as well, so a failed boot device could bring down the system. If you have an up-to-date copy of your config database, you can certainly upload that to a clean install and go from there. A second USB stick is cheap enough, though, that it seems like a waste not to mirror them.

 

[jgreco]

Mirrored boot devices are not, incidentally, guaranteed to result in a successful boot. It is entirely possible for a corrupted install on the first boot device to totally derail the booting process. This is a difficult problem to solve comprehensively.

 

[marbus90]

Yes, the data is on the HDDs, only the system is on the boot drive, so the data is safe even if the boot drive dies ;)

However you probably want to restore a backup of your configuration on a fresh install instead of restarting from zero so you need to backup it before of course :)

Just be sure to have the encryption recovery keys at hand (not on the pool) if you run that. ;)

 

[Bidule0hm]

He doesn't say that he use encrypted pool, but even if it's the case he should have a backup of the keys as per the manual ;)