Like many users who began on FreeNAS 11 and earlier, I like the cordless and SATA-port-avoiding method of using an internal USB header and a pair of SanDisk Cruzer Fits for the boot mirror. While I've migrated my main box to SATA SSDs, my backup box had stayed with this USB until now. I migrated to a PCIe card, similar to https://www.truenas.com/community/threads/pcie-m-2-card-with-a-good-sata-controller.72556/ except for my extra constraint to use a PCIe x1 due to my older motherboard.
Controller
The Syba SI-PEX40115 is the product I decided on with its ASMedia 1062 chipset.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01L83Z7Z0/
The SI-PEX30115's pros are:
I did search for B-Key alternatives, both on these forums, Amazon, and eBay. There's not much out there. However, if I missed a product/solution please tell me! Again, my criteria are:
Closest I could find were M-Key solutions, and even the single slot cards were usually (always?) x4 and up. In a dual arrangement they also probably require PCIe bifurcation. Both of which are out of the question for my motherboard.
Another common product were cards with one B slot and one M slot. However, the B slots wouldn't have a controller of their own (requiring a SATA pass-through to the motherboard) and were also x4 and up, presumably for more bandwidth to the M slot.
I will admit to purchasing a couple SI-ADA50067 adapters https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OKSFFDU as a backup. They accept a B+M-Key (or m.SATA) drive and present power and data like any 2.5" or 3.5" SATA drive. While being the opposite of cordless, this particular model does have the advantage of mounting in card slots (which I have plenty of) rather than drive bays (which I'm out of). These adapters also helped parallelize / speed up the burning-in of the lot of drives I bought below.
Drives
I used a pair of used Kingston SNS4151S3/16GD 16GB drives. These, and similar, M.2 B+M-Key / SATA drives are dirt cheap on ebay, especially at the 16GB capacity and can be purchased by the lot. $25 shipped for 10. The appeal is not their price though, but rather not 'wasting' speed, capacity, or mboard/HBA SATA ports on the boot devices. So these ex-Chromebook components are a perfect fit. Caveat Emptor though - two of the drives were outright duds, and two more already had reallocation events. I suspected as much, hence why I bought 10 (and mirroring is still a good idea). Even with a yield of 6, its still $4 apiece shipped.
If used/refurbish is not your style, new SSDs (many are keyed for B+M, supporting either protocol) can also be had for $25 apiece.
Potenitally with a bit of that speed and capacity 'waste'. That said, the Intel Optane 16/32GB memory looks like an interesting (but unconventional) solution. Maybe next time!
Burning-in
The burn-in is what I outline in this thread, and I'm happy to hear improvements:
www.truenas.com
I adjusted badblocks to -b 512 -c 524288 to line up with the 256MB cache I saw quoted for these disks. (Not sure I believe it, and another page laughably quoted 1GB). Using the timed badblocks, the aggregate is 140MB/s (read much faster, write much slower)
Fio random 4k readwrites each had a bandwidth of 270KiB/s. Certainly much better than USB flash.
Results
Since this boot method is used on my backup NAS, which is only powered at night, it goes through many more boots than a typical NAS. So it also provides a great opportunity for "accelerated life testing" SI-PEX40115 boots! While this puts more wear and tear on the HDDs, it saves power (and more importantly noise since it in the living room).
I hope this provides a helpful guide to those limited to just a x1 PCIe slot for a robust, economical, and cordless boot solution!
Controller
The Syba SI-PEX40115 is the product I decided on with its ASMedia 1062 chipset.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01L83Z7Z0/
I first tried using an IO Crest SI-PEX40153 with a Jmicron JMB582 chipset. It was promising from the compatibility, badblocks, and fio perspectives. My motherboard just wouldn't boot from it!
The SI-PEX30115's pros are:
- x1 (one of the sales graphics says x2, but it is in fact x1)
- two M.2 B-Key (SATA) slots
- onboard SATA controller (no mboard passthrough)
- doesn't need a power connection
- The ASMedia 106x chipset is well supported by FreeBSD https://www.truenas.com/community/t...ith-a-good-sata-controller.72556/#post-502479
- While the ASMedia 106x are well supported, the cards themselves are often made by manufacturers who don't have a great reliability reputation
- New ASMedia cards tend to be relatively expensive, and on par with the cost of a used HBA https://www.truenas.com/community/t...t-having-enough-sata-ports.99062/#post-683450
- No RAID support (I'd only consider in the context of a three or 4 disk high-reliability boot) https://www.truenas.com/community/resources/highly-available-boot-pool-strategy.184/
- As mav@ mentions below, even just mirroring the boot devices is unnecessary with the prevalence of NVMe drives.
- Since this setup is not NVMe, I'll continue to use this mirror arrangement.
- If/when I am looking for additional reliability - and simplification - a single NVMe would be the next step before pursuing jgreco's more elaborate solution.
I did search for B-Key alternatives, both on these forums, Amazon, and eBay. There's not much out there. However, if I missed a product/solution please tell me! Again, my criteria are:
- PCIe x1
- Cordless!
- No motherboard pass-throughs for SATA
- No external power connections (this is why I didn't look at SATA DOMs)
- Support two M.2 drives, preferably same type (B-key/SATA)
Closest I could find were M-Key solutions, and even the single slot cards were usually (always?) x4 and up. In a dual arrangement they also probably require PCIe bifurcation. Both of which are out of the question for my motherboard.
Another common product were cards with one B slot and one M slot. However, the B slots wouldn't have a controller of their own (requiring a SATA pass-through to the motherboard) and were also x4 and up, presumably for more bandwidth to the M slot.
I will admit to purchasing a couple SI-ADA50067 adapters https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OKSFFDU as a backup. They accept a B+M-Key (or m.SATA) drive and present power and data like any 2.5" or 3.5" SATA drive. While being the opposite of cordless, this particular model does have the advantage of mounting in card slots (which I have plenty of) rather than drive bays (which I'm out of). These adapters also helped parallelize / speed up the burning-in of the lot of drives I bought below.
Drives
I used a pair of used Kingston SNS4151S3/16GD 16GB drives. These, and similar, M.2 B+M-Key / SATA drives are dirt cheap on ebay, especially at the 16GB capacity and can be purchased by the lot. $25 shipped for 10. The appeal is not their price though, but rather not 'wasting' speed, capacity, or mboard/HBA SATA ports on the boot devices. So these ex-Chromebook components are a perfect fit. Caveat Emptor though - two of the drives were outright duds, and two more already had reallocation events. I suspected as much, hence why I bought 10 (and mirroring is still a good idea). Even with a yield of 6, its still $4 apiece shipped.
If used/refurbish is not your style, new SSDs (many are keyed for B+M, supporting either protocol) can also be had for $25 apiece.
Potenitally with a bit of that speed and capacity 'waste'. That said, the Intel Optane 16/32GB memory looks like an interesting (but unconventional) solution. Maybe next time!
Burning-in
The burn-in is what I outline in this thread, and I'm happy to hear improvements:
Trying to make a comprehensive HDD burn-in
I've recently started using fio (in addition to SMART, badblocks/nwipe, and diskinfo) to do a better job screening hard drives before adding them to a pool. In the past, disks without the 24hr fio would pass everything, yet they will still start throwing errors and sometimes even get kicked...
www.truenas.com
I adjusted badblocks to -b 512 -c 524288 to line up with the 256MB cache I saw quoted for these disks. (Not sure I believe it, and another page laughably quoted 1GB). Using the timed badblocks, the aggregate is 140MB/s (read much faster, write much slower)
Fio random 4k readwrites each had a bandwidth of 270KiB/s. Certainly much better than USB flash.
Results
Since this boot method is used on my backup NAS, which is only powered at night, it goes through many more boots than a typical NAS. So it also provides a great opportunity for "accelerated life testing" SI-PEX40115 boots! While this puts more wear and tear on the HDDs, it saves power (and more importantly noise since it in the living room).
I hope this provides a helpful guide to those limited to just a x1 PCIe slot for a robust, economical, and cordless boot solution!
I first tried the IO Crest SI-PEX40153 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07ZWVTHDR/ which worked great except for my particular motherboard compatibility. The card is shorter and taller, which may be better for your case. It is also heat sinked and cheaper than the Syba. So it may be worth considering for you. I do note that the JMB582 chipset is not as well regarded as the ASMedia on the forums. But it absolutely passed all the badblocks and fio testing I could throw at it - in both TrueNAS-13.0-U1 and the older 12.0-U8.1, disproving in this specific case the concerns that the JMB582 wasn't well suppoted on 12 (and may work better in 13)
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