FN chewing boot USB's

[ubuntumuntu]

HI folks,

By & large my system seems pretty solid, but I've had to replace the USB flash disk I boot from & stores my config maybe 3, possibly coming up to #4 now.

The system is a HPE MicroServer Gen10 (p04923-s01), I swapped out the optical with a SSD (apps & cache, da4), and booting off the internal USB3 port (da0).

SMART reports everything healthy (though da0 doesn't seem supported), but twice in the last week the entire system locked up HARD, forcing me to do a cold reboot.

A quick look in /var/log/* doesn't really shed much light - there seems to be a lapse in time from when the system was operating smoothly to when it simply stopped without warning.

Any idea what could be going on?
Am I missing something?

 

[JohnDigital]

Switch to a small SSD for boot and never look back unless of course you dont have any free SATA ports, then you can probably get one of these. I used to burn through USBs too. I started grabbing these and these issues are a thing of the past.

 

[rdl]

I have FreeNAS 9.3 and put the system files (.sys where the logs go) on flash drive on the internal USB port so the HDDs could spin down. By default, this OS loves to write log files and would burn through a flash drive in less than a year at first. I changed the settings so that only the most serious issues got logged and haven't had to replace the .sys drive in quite a while. The boot drive is a pair of mirrored Sandisk Fit USB flash drives that have been in use for almost 5 years.

 

[Arwen]

Most USB flash drives are poor quality. Other operating systems & file systems don't detect the problems as quickly as FreeNAS with ZFS. That's because ZFS always detects the problems. Okay, maybe not always, but far, far better than prior file systems.

So, imagine how many errors in USB flash drives you never knew about, when using anything other than ZFS?

Rules when required to use USB flash drives;

• First, buy from reputable manufacturers.
• Second rule, perform an initial size test to verify size. (The OEM devices would be fine, but cheap knock-offs might be fake flash... this is one way to check.) There are special programs that do this. I use a Linux varient, "f3write" and "f3read".
• Third rule, don't buy the cheapest line from reputable manufacturers.
• Fourth, don't buy cutting / bleeding edge or newest models.
• Next, if critical that the NAS stay up, mirror them.
• Last, buy several, like 3 and assume they will fail.

Before I started using ZFS at home I wondered / worried about how to detect data corruption. (I've had it, just could not be certain I knew every place it was.) Now I have a little more confidence in my data.

Good luck if you choose to accept this mission, (oh wait, that's not right... .