new boot drives

[doglover]

Hello. I currently boot off of a single USB 2 thumb drive. It takes quite a bit longer with 11.3 than it did with 11.1. And it is getting old, several years now. I gather it will fail soon, especially if the OS runs off the drive and not loaded into RAM, which I saw in the documentation.
I also wanted to mirror the drive and have a second one. I did notice that the documentation discourages this, strongly recommending dual internal SSDs instead.
The motherboard in there has no free SATA ports, so I would need to buy an expansion board. The posts seems to suggest a LSI HBA. I guess I could try to find one.

Is it really so bad to have dual USB2 sticks? I already own them, and I hate to mess with, and possibly screw up, something that is working so well. Esp since I am a novice and questionable if I can fix problems I cause.

Am I reading the posts correctly that if I buy something off the hardware list, it will just work? Or will I need to reinstall the OS and find drivers? Maybe I will need to reinstall the OS to the SSDs? Or do I just transfer the old OS off the USB2 thumb drives?
I do see that I will change BIOS settings to point to the new devices. I think I can do that.
Thanks much, thanks for FreeNAS.
Best,
IMF

 

[Yorick]

Is it really so bad to have dual USB2 sticks?

You can just run with it. Take config backups. If things go south, install on a fresh stick and restore config. If the USB sticks die too often for your taste, move to an SSD. Intel 320 40GB are cheap on eBay.

Am I reading the posts correctly that if I buy something off the hardware list, it will just work?

Correct. No need to reinstall or find drivers.

 

[Jurgen Segaert]

Maybe I will need to reinstall the OS to the SSDs? Or do I just transfer the old OS off the USB2 thumb drives?

You can use the attach/detach procedure as in the manual: Attach the new boot device, let it resilver and detach the old USB stick.

I'm using a single 2.5" 120GB spinning laptop drive as my boot device and used this process. Upgrades are significantly faster than when I was using a USB stick.

 

[ChrisRM]

I'm using a single 2.5" 120GB spinning laptop drive as my boot device and used this process. Upgrades are significantly faster than when I was using a USB stick.

I'm in practically the same situation as the OP, and looking at your single drive boot setup and wondering. I have a spare M.2 SSD that's simply sitting in a USB3 case; what's the downside of switching from mirrored USB stick to a single USB SSD?