Testing to find the best USB flash drive to boot an OS like Unraid

[@FahimRahman-o5l]

update this video with recent drives ty for your content!

[@jameswieser2857]

Great Video Ed! You are such a huge help to Unraid owners, and I can't imagine the amount of work and money this one took, thanks for your time. You noted a question about the thermometer. Just a FYI, it measures the amount of infrared coming off the object. The led just shows where it's pointed. The detection region is like a cone, it gets bigger the further away from the end of the gun. You were pretty close, so your results should be good., And the detection area was small like the size of the drive. Hope this helps. Thanks again for the commitment.

[@albertlammerson2700]

Thumbs up before I even finish watching! I didn't know I should care about my flash drive. Now I do.

[@midnightgadget3459]

Excellent, thanks for taking the time to test this for us UnRaiders.

[@DustinHaning]

Would love to see a follow up to this with some current models!

[@D31TY666]

I'd love too for 2024

[@cyberspectre8675]

Very informative video, as usual. You always make valuable content. Surprised to see the SanDisk results. When I built my server, the drive recommended by LimeTech was the Ultra Fit (USB 3.0). I've been booting from it since late 2017, no issues.

[@ikkuranus]

Lucky you! Mine died about a month ago and I just purchased it last Black Friday.

[@jamesstewart5005]

Explains why I had to recently replace my Sandisk Cruzer after just a few months of forgetting to turn the swap off on my OMV server. Great info!

[@ph0t0dave]

Thanks for the review, very informative and entertaining! I was sweating bullets at the beginning as I have been using the Kingston Datatraveler SE9G2's and glad to see that they held up! :) Keep up the great work!

[@ToshYusaf]

Thank you. No longer have to burn my hands using Sandisk with a tested alternative.

[@agenormarrero5220]

Excellent, the best channel for Unraid fan , even the USB drive, I personally had a lot of trouble searching for a usb flash drive to use in the Unraid , Thanks for this video that point us in the right direction!

[@brian.hanifin]

Thank you! I watched this video a while back, and I got a "USB flash drive failure" error message overnight. I put in an order for a Samsung Bar Plus through your link to be delivered tomorrow! Now to watch your video on the new USB Drive licensing request procedure. :)

[@slaggerdog]

Thanks for all the work you do!

[@mattm8140]

Great video as always. Thanks for all you do for the unraid community.

[@imshark2813]

Awesome test! I think every test should be as detailed as this one.

[@doom2125]

Incredible work as always man! Thank you!

[@chocodave]

Nearly 4 years on, and the best drives in this video are incredible hard to get your hands on. Or worse, in my case, are counterfeits being sold through amazon and ebay (currently 3 for 3 - incorrect capacity shown, all 0s GUID, or just generic off-brand chip inside branded shell). Is there any chance of an updated version of this guide with currently available USB sticks, please?

[@duskravel6745]

Have you found a good USB-Stick by now? I´m having the same problem :)

[@chocodave]

@@duskravel6745 Yes... kinda?! I gave up and ended up buying a Samsung 64GB BAR Plus directly from the Samsung online store, and it's worked good so far. I'm aware of the potential for issues with USB3.1 and >32GB, but so far so good

[@raoulduke8310]

I have been on a Sandisk UltraFit 32GB for 21 months. I rebooted yesterday and - the joke is on me - the drive had failed someone over the last month between reboots. I had been doing big updates and config changes recently and failed to backup. Thanks for the video, I'll be switching to a Samsung BAR (from your affiliate link). - I worked on the dead Sandisk Ultrafit for hours, multiple computers, partedmagic etc... no luck. It could be seen as an installed USB, but would not mount and would be stopped with a code 43. No storage size was available, no format, checkdisk or any other option to deal with the filesystem. I took it apart and baked it at 410C for 5 minutes and slapped it immediately into my windows laptop. Winner! Immediately brought back to life, all files copied off and will be transferring install to the new drive. TY Spaceinvader One!

[@IEnjoyCreatingVideos]

Wonderful video as always Ed! Thank you for taking the time to test and share your results with us!💖👍👌😎JP

[@CanaldoRonan]

This Channel is awesome,i am learning a Lot about unraid thank you 👊

[@bkiesz]

Thanks for the great video... Always kind of wondered how durable these were!!! Used you're affiliate link to grab the Fit Plus 32!

[@uther10]

Thanks for the work on this, ton of work and presented concisely! Cheers!

[@methanoid]

I'm a fan of the tiny ones... last thing you want is a big stick that can be knocked and damaged or damage the board/socket. Used a Sandisk Cruzer Fit since I bought unRAID licence. EDIT: Got to end of video.. I'd be choosing the Samsung Fit Plus for sure

[@chrislowe8085]

Funny you released this video, I just had to replace my USB drive as it was starting to fail plus it was only 1GB. I got a SanDisk 32GB mini USB 2.0. it wasn't on your top 3. Love your video's keep em coming they sure have helped me keep my UNRAID Server running for all these years.

[@jafizzle95]

As I was watching the results, I was thinking to myself "I hope he has affiliate links for the Samsung Bar Plus". Glad to see that you do, and I think I'll be picking up a couple from your link. I have a bunch of 5+ year old 2.0 flash drives of many types and they are all painfully slow.

[@drummerboyj70]

Awesome video! Thanks for all your testing!!

[@atlmacman]

Thank you very much for doing this. I'll purchase using your link right now. All three links don't result in a straight-away purchase opportunity. I believe I'll just find what you recommended and join your Patreon.

[@janis3844]

Your the best Unraid KZbinr!

[@leer1143]

I have been researching this very thing for weeks as i am setting up an Unraid Server. I initially boight the San Disk Ultra fit 3.1 but i wasnt too keen on how hot it got when i plugged it in and the Unraid USB creator wouldn't see it anyway. In the end i opted for the Kingston Data Traveller 32GB. Glad i made a good choice.

[@sylvainalain6637]

I had to refresh my USB stick at home , I bought your top 3 :) I will use your #1 pick when I have the time to start my first Unraid nas with my old 2013 PC tower. I need to buy 2x 4tb ironwolf before starting my project :)

[@rallygallery]

Great testing Ed.

[@MisterPhysics511]

Thank you for all your time and effort! I can't believe this video isn't more popular. I've approached this search multiple times through the years and never came across this until seeing a random Unraid guide. You covered all the good drives, along with their variables that no one else has mentioned, let alone test. I will share your video whenever I see someone looking for a good USB drive on r/Homelab, and other server / tech focused communities.

[@kimmerrild3487]

Love your vids. I really do like those hardware testing vids that you are makeing. I would like to see more of that. Such as HBAs data controllers and alike. I don't remember to have seen a video about transcoding 4k and the problems it will give. I take it you don't have the hardware to transcode with like a Nvidia card, but... Would be nice to see. I really do enjoy your videos, and I hope that you are makeing alittle on the side from KZbin and patrons.

[@joeshmoe346]

I’m not convinced I need to go replace my current drive as the benefits don’t seem to be there. But I appreciate being able to purchase a backup drive in case and having that well tested. Thanks Ed

[@Burnstation3D]

something else to note when choosing a usb drive for unraid is the location restrictions (ie. my old cisco c210 m2 had tight space around the internal usb slot) just something to keep in mind as ive had to modify a usb stick to make it work before.

[@danielglenn4738]

Thanks for the video! Given I had the hottest USB you have reviewed decided to take your advice and replace.... Bought the Samsung Fit Plus (using your link). Reason going for the Fit, was purely on the size, as will be less likely to get broken by mistake if I am moving my server around with the stick in.

[@Journetta]

Yeah, that was my only thing i took into consideration when buying my usb tbh... I just wanted the smallest USB possible... i dont like the idea of having it stick out Although i could have a internal usb header and put my flash drive there... and that would solve the size issue.. so maybe if i needed to replace my usb i'd do that also.. which in turn, i could also use my system fans to cool down the usb if it is one that gets quite hot under load

[@ironwoodoverland]

If you have the space you can attach adapter to one of your motherboards USB header and have a larger USB drive inside of your case.

[@TheRangeControl]

Legendary education as per usual! :-D

[@musmuk5350]

Excellent thank you very much for this test

[@ChristopherScanlan88]

I've had two USB drives fail in the last year on my unraid server, both SanDisk. Hopefully the Samsung will do better. Thanks as always.

[@KarelBrendl]

Thanks for the review. I was wondering recently which one I should buy for the similar purpose (multi ISO drive).

[@JuanLopez-db4cc]

Thanks for this Experiment!

[@ubercorey]

What a public service, THANK YOU!

[@yasinarif7291]

Wow can only be written to completely less than 30 times, hopefully it was just because it was being written to and read continous. Good job with the tempreture readings, my next drive will have a Large metal cover

[@MMorris75]

Great Video as usual! Could you perhaps do one on installing grafana and setting up a dashboard for unraid? I'd imagine you'd have a lot of takers on that one.

[@nikolaypetrov9789]

great work, thanks

[@bigchew3149]

Glad Some One Finally Made This Video ! I Was In This Spot A Short Time Ago & Started Trying To Find The Best Usb flash drive i could Buy & I Ended up Finding a PNY Elite-X Fit USB 3.0 With Read Speeds of 200mbps And it had real good Reviews So i bought one & With my testing it was reading about 225-250 & I Am Glad I Found Them I Also Found Samsung ones but i also read a bunch of bad Reviews on it so PNY it was & I Now Have 2 Of Them For Both My UnRaid Servers a 64Gb With UnRaid Pro & a 32Gb With UnRaid Basic So Far Im Really Happy With Them !

[@uByte2]

Been using the kingston drives and they seem to last a long time. Good to know that they should fit the bill. Thanks for the research.

[@TheGodOfAllThatWas]

Did you look at the table? The fact that 2 of the 3 tested designs scored the worse gives me pause about even trusting the 2nd place kingston.

[@ievmertus2486]

Great topic again

[@radicaicares]

Remember to always backup your config files no matter how good your flash drive is, It's not a matter of if it will die, it's when.

[@amateurwizard]

How do I do that?

[@stan464]

@@amateurwizard You can either use the UnRAID Backup Flashdrive option that will download as a ZIP File or you can simple just Copy it to a share with Krusader and then copy from the UnRAID Server to your PC.

[@simonrussell4986]

That's just reminded me to backup my flash after a new drive last week, thanks. Always forget to (although I've got CA Appdata Backup copying the flash to the array - it's somewhere at least). For the amount they cost, it would be handy if Unraid could support a hot spare that was preauthorised and mirrored from the main flash. Flash fail? Make backup bootable and reboot (or something like that).

[@amateurwizard]

@@stan464 Thanks

[@Journetta]

I agree, to me.. aslong as the Flash drive lasts long enough that i don't have to buy a new license then i don't mind.. i think Unraid has a 1 year transferable license? for usbs... Just incase your usb did break, don't quote me on that though.

[@gacpac]

I have the sandisk tiny usb 2 that he showed in the video. It does the job, they all do. Something nice would be setting up high availability for flash drives

[@bamhm182]

Great video as always. Do faster read/write speeds mean faster boot times for Unraid?

[@DarksurfX]

Very good info!

[@stephenwhite5444]

Great video and test! I thought Unraid suggests to use USB 2.0 drives because they are supposedly more reliable. Have you happened to test the Samsung Bar reliabilityagainst any older 2.0 flash drives? I'm gonna use your link to the Samsung Bar....I was planning on using a 10yr old Sandisk Cruzer 8gb usb2.0 flash I have that's rarely been used. But this one you tested will probably be far better.

[@rixmix3317]

thanks for the video! you need to change your samsung bar affiliate link though because the amazon link has changed

[@shanez1215]

The issue is with the thermometer is that metal has better thermal conductivity than plastic. So a lower surface temperature COULD mean a higher efficiency controller and flash OR that the case of the flash drive is not conducting the heat of the flash and causing the flash itself to run too hot.

[@MartinPaoloni]

Have you considered high endurance SD cards with an Unraid-compatible card reader? Those cards are common in dash cams and security cameras. They should, in theory, last a lot longer than those flash drivers. Thanks for the video! I'm still using my "old" Sony drive but if it dies, now I know what I'm getting.

[@yungdeano]

Would be interested to see a test for this!

[@D31TY666]

Hi! very informative content! Any video planned for today's available products?

[@scruffy3121]

Great video, Unfortunately in Germany it seems like the top 3 Drvies have been discontinued. Starts at 64GB now.

[@InternetD1991]

Using F2FS as a filesystem would dramatically increase the endurance and slightly increase the performance of any flash device. Mostly for those drives not having a decent controller managing weariness (aka. 99% of cheap usb drives outthere).

[@sharedknowledge6640]

Nice video but, as you discovered, modern flash drives have relatively terrible endurance especially if they can’t do what’s known as wear leveling where they attempt, to varying degrees, to distribute writes over all the blocks in the drive. These mainstream drives generally use the cheapest possible flash which these days is QLC or Quad Level Cell flash which is both slow to write and has miserable endurance. If you really want a reliable thumb drive get an industrial SLC (Single Level) drive with a specified write endurance. Next best is an industrial MLC (2 level) drive with advanced wear leveling with a specified write endurance. Either of these would have literally lasted through hundreds or even thousands of cycles of your test. Two excellent brands are Swissbit and ATP. You only need a 1 GB or 2 GB size for Unraid but even at those sizes you will spend at least two or three times what your 16 GB drives cost. But they will be trouble free likely longer than other hardware in your server and far outlive any mainstream drive. And if Lime and Unraid go away your existing license(s) will live on without needing Lime to transfer your license to a new thumb drive. Also, as an aside, stay far away from Sandisk. The USB 3.0 Nano drive ran scalding hot and so does the newer 3.1 version. Sandisk has been called out on the issue and claims it’s unavoidable. Yet Samsung and other companies make similarly tiny drives that are far faster and far cooler than the failure prone Sandisk drives. Sandisk was bought out and now makes a lot of junk.

[@InternetD1991]

There is a way to correct the flaw of endurance no matter the flash drive, and get some performance as a byproduct: F2FS as a filesystem.

[@sharedknowledge6640]

Julien Chapotot But I don’t believe F2FS is supported in this application? It’s a boot drive and also has to be supported by Unraid. In reality just not filling the drives even with FAT will allow the better ones to live far longer as they can wear level. I don’t blame wanting to accelerate the time to failure but it’s far from a realistic use case except perhaps for things like video surveillance which do fill the drive and then keep it nearly full. But, in general, when you look at the total cost of building an Unraid server spending $30 for an industrial rated high endurance flash drive is hardly prohibitive for most.

[@InternetD1991]

@@sharedknowledge6640 Nothing against a better drive. Sure, Unraid sadly doesnt support f2fs out of the box. I use myself f2fs a lot in pi related projects (sometimes with years of uptime), and i didnt loose a single sdcard since 2015. I just hope that unraid will support more filesystems in the future.

[@billbillings913]

My flash drive failed to boot into Unraid last night after 89 days of uptime. To recover, I plugged it into my PC and it was glitchy, but was still readable enough for me to recover my config files and build a new flash drive. It was the Kingston SE9 G2, and it was only 8 months old!

[@fitcher-armchair-sleuth]

Hard to say what might happen on old machines .. USB 2.0 / 3.0 only. I'm always messing around with booting various live OS's on Optical disc and USB flash drives. I got an old Win7 Machine with a gigabyte GA-MA785GT-UDH3 and it hates booting from usb. Talked to some folks who have similar gigabyte motherboards and they have the same issues. Changed the settings in bios to no avail. Always have to resort back to an optical (dvd) disc. Anyway, nice informative video / good info. Thank You!

[@kimsonvu]

Thanks you so much! Kingston just release Datetraveler Dyson…

[@Vinster411]

Hey Ed, wondering how the lifespan was with the Samsung drives? looking at the reviews on the Samsung website, it is not favourable and seemed to have a high failure rate. Wondering what your experience has been?

[@K0nr4d_]

Always take such reviews with a grain of salt. You wouldn't write a review about a flash drive that works perfectly, right? As a result, the reviews are always kind of biased to the negative side.

[@TangoMikeOscar]

So this is why flash drives are like gold dust in the UK atm! ;)

[@dogbog99]

You can get them everywhere, comment makes no sense.

[@arthurlee4323]

A comment about your digital thermometer use, most have a spot size versus distance printed on the plastic somewhere. They're very sensitive to how far you are from your target and the result is as you found, a varying measurement that correlates with distance.

[@weaverliu3659]

a great man is defined by not sending back 27 faulty USB drive.

[@odom-pu]

Interesting... I got a Sandisk Cruzer USB 3 for my first unRaid Server, it broke within 2 weeks. Then I read online that a USB 2 was recommended, so i got the Sandisk Cruzer USB 2 and it has been going good for almost 2 years now.

[@patrickdoty5534]

the laser thermometer needs to be calibrated for the emissivity of the material you are sampling. For example, shiny metal has a very different emissivity than a dark matte plastic. You can google for a table of emissivity values for a variety of materials.

[@MrCorpsy6]

I got a two basic questions about UnRAID. I'm going to buy a new hard drive tomorrow, I already have one 4 tb hard drive (formated using Windows). I have never used unRAID or similar OS/softwares. I usually spend my time in a Arch linux distro and I sometimes need to boot Win Seven inside VirtualBox to do some stuffs. 1) Is it possible to use UnRAID as a main computer, using a Linux distro as a main OS? In my case, I'd like to use Arch Linux as a main OS, Windows when needed and have a NAS in my computer (I'll shutdown my computer when it's not needed). 2) If I use my new HDD to test UnRAID, how easily can I add my current 4tb disks containing data to the array (as a storage disk)? Do I only need to copy all the data to the UnRAID disk/some other external disk, wipe it and add it to the array? (I know I'll need to buy another drive for the parity disk).

[@TheCerealHobbyist]

Any update to this for 2022? Are just the newer versions of these OK?

[@Journetta]

I think, aslong as you black up your unraid flash data often.. and it lasts long enough so that you are able to transfer your unraid license to the new USB.. IT should be okay... It's great to see the durabillity though and great video. think i'll bookmark this video for when i need a new usb for my unraid server, but don't think imma switch my current usb at this time I have a sandisk cruzer Fit as i wanted a small usb to put in the back of my server so i didn't have anything sticking out.

[@LMDpocus]

Any plans on a refresh of this video with newer drives? Due the suggested drives ain't around anymore or for insane prices.

[@abdulsalamsstyle9933]

A big thumbs up for this professional video and the great offer behinde it I really appreciate it and it helped me so much Exactly what I what I was looking for Unfortunatlly theres no affiliate Link for Germany

[@Bacender]

Very informative. Would like to purchase with an affiliate link however you haven't included one for Australia!

[@tfbekk]

My previous unraid flash drive was the Sandisk UltraFit CZ43. Worked for ~5 years. It recently died, so I bought a new UltraFit, this time the CZ430. The new one does not have a unique GUID, so will not work with Unraid unfortunately.

[@bigbin1070]

we need a donate button specifically for this project as an ongoing project. cheap/expensive drives all considered and you can put up a website like jonyguru and be the jonyguru for usb flashdrives.

[@rcobsesssed]

I always appreciate your content, thank you! I downloaded Check Flash and began testing my drawer full of USB sticks... I'm getting VERY inconsistent results which is concerning. Sometimes they have write errors, the next test they do not. I have 4 particular drives that have been tested 4 times with single runs each time... all 4 failed the first 2 runs and passed the second 2 runs. (yes I understand I'm wearing these drives out, these are test subjects that I do not care about). What do you make of the inconsistent results?

[@TheGodOfAllThatWas]

I wouldn't trust a drive that fails even once. Not with any data I cared about. Not worth it. Having said that, it might be related to wear leveling right? If you fill a buffer somewhere related to the wear leveling it's probably going to throw errors. Once it's worked out the buffer it'll have returned to a state of working. Or actually maybe depending on how the test is run it might be at the NTFS level, and NTFS might mark the sector as bad, and on re-test since that sector is marked as unusable it isn't used and passes it's testing since that bad sector isn't tested..... Not sure about either of those, but those are basically the same flow of how it could be happening at 2 different levels.. (they aren't even mutually exclusive, it could be doing both at once). It's all I can think of that lines up with your test case.

[@rcobsesssed]

TheGodOfAllThatWas Just for my sanity, I ordered a couple of the recommended Samsung’s that were recommended in the video, they both passed, so I’ll be throwing any failed drive in the bin.

[@iguanac6466]

The best perf/price USB drives seem to be the Patriot drives. Outside of that, wonder if it would be better to take the case off your flash drive and thermal glue a heatsink to the controller. Wonder if that would significantly help thermals and maybe even write failures? Idea for a new video?

[@bayerbear6770]

Would have liked to know the idle temp as well. A good usb-drive should be ambient, but i've never felt one that cold before.

[@acejokerz]

Do you have any plans on doing a sonarr/radarr but for books and comic books? I’m trying out mylar3 for comics but having way too many problems.

[@AquaRelliux]

I think the main reason the Samsung won is because it has a larger capacity. Flash NAND tend to last longer and have more built it redundancy once the size increases. it would be really nice if you could test them all with the same size I am sure the results may differ!

[@wgblondel]

That's what I thought also... The flash is twice as large, so it's normal that the number of cycles is doubled. The best one in this case seems to be the SE9 G2 then

[@BR-wc7nh]

Thanks for the video!!! I have a follow up question. I have the first usb drive listed but it’s 64gb. Would affect it if I use it as boot up or should I just purchase a 32gb one? Thanks in advance!

[@MystArrr]

Did you try to intall unRAID on the drives? 3 Weeks ago I bought the San Disk Ultra Fit 16G and couldn't install unRAID on it. An unsupported drive is useless, no matter how reliable it is.

[@joeshmoe346]

Was it formatted properly?

[@MystArrr]

@@joeshmoe346Yes it was. I tried everything I could except a manual install.

[@Journetta]

USB 2.0 is completly fine for a unraid OS in my opinion, like you said its only for booting the OS, and once its up it doesn't do much :p I think i'd just recommend getting one from a well known brand, 16gbs or 32gbs cuz they cheap anyway and having it as small as possible so you dont have anything sticking out the back of your server.

[@lolcorporation7308]

i run my pfsense and unraid server both on 64Gb samsung fit plus. havent had any issues yet. my unraid server is about 6-7 months now and i dont even remember my pfsense, i think around a year.

[@l-l]

Thoughts on a followup video?

[@iHenry2]

After the drives failed and were allowed to cool, did the work?

[@SpaceinvaderOne]

Hi Henry. No sadely the failed drives never worked again.

[@iHenry2]

@@SpaceinvaderOne good to know. I purchased originally the Sandisc metal drives, and the Samsung fit drives. I like the former but because of heat I'm going to be transferring everything to the Samsung drives. Thanks for the information. 👍

[@s0litaire2k]

Can cofirm the Sandisk UIltraFit USB3's get VERY hot when plugged directly into a usb3 socket. I've found that If you use a short usb3 extension cable it does not heat up as much and stays cool enough to touch.

[@johnm2012]

Why would that be, do you suppose? Is the socket itself hot and you're getting thermal conduction between it and the drive?

[@s0litaire2k]

@@johnm2012 Think the small devices pull to much power for it's size, their is not enough surface area to remove heat quickly. The added 12" - 18" of USB3 cable has enough resistance to keep the power draw in check in regards to heat build-up. Ive tried it in all of my systems onboard USB3 sockets and all are the same, It does not seem to heat up as much when used in USB2 sockets so I tend to use it in there if it's anything more than flashing an img to it for booting.

[@johnm2012]

@@s0litaire2k I can understand them running cooler in a USB 2 socket because they are running much slower but I don't understand how simply putting them on an extension (unless the extension itself is only USB 2 spec, of course) would affect the operating temperature. Any significant resistance in the wire would reduce the operating voltage and limit the current, causing instability and probably reverting to USB 2 operation at lower speeds and temperatures. But then the cable in question would definitely not be meeting USB 3 spec.

[@s0litaire2k]

@@johnm2012 All i know is if I plug it in direct it gets hot, if I use a USB3/USB2 extension of any length it's cooler.

[@shades3475]

seems the samsung fit and bar are not available in 32G anymore - according to unraid we can (or should not use??) anything about 32G - any thoughts on alternatives?!

[@svetoslavstoyanchev7428]

Hold on a second. Marketing says - flash drives are capable of around 10,000 write cycles per cell.. or 10,000 full read-writes. How come this video says only 29 full read-writes before it dies woow. Please explain.

[@moebius2k103]

Dude what is your delivery address? We need to know so that we can send you a new microphone.

[@noose1987]

He uses a fairly OK mic. He's just too far away when speaking.

[@bretts4343]

It's been 2 years and now the #1 & #3 choices - the Samsungs - aren't available any more. Time for an update! On the other hand... I bought a very cheap random brand 8GB drive many years ago and it's finally died on me, so I'm not sure just how critical it really is to get the top quality drive for the very minimal use UNRAID gives it.

[@iben3271]

what do you mean? I bought a bar plus and the read speed is actually higher now...

[@666gene]

the problem with this testing is the Metal USBs will most likely be hotter due to them helping dissipate the heat from the chips inside

[@cossiewill9503]

And now we need a "migrating your unraid OS between USB not drives" video SpaceinvaderOne 🙂

[@cossiewill9503]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/hHbOmHSee66Sfa8

[@slughead326]

I have a question about UPS systems and Unraid. I bought a Cyber-Power unit just to allow my Plex server to shut down when the power goes out. The Cyber-Power system has a power management function. Just need to know how to integrate with Unraid. My understanding is that with a power outage I would have to go thru a parity check and re-load all my hard drives. Can you do a video on how to configure and set up a UPS with Unraid? Thanks, I use your videos as my guide to get my Plex unraid server up and running.

[@nixc]

Thanks for this, great video... however you've missed an important test! The usb stick you use with unRAID needs to have an internal serial number so that if you need to register your unRAID license the software can generate a GUID which can then be associated with your key. Not all usb drives support this - in fact back when I was building my setup years ago, I had to go through a good few before I realised this and simply bought one recommended on unRAID site. Here's an article discussing it: wiki.unraid.net/Hardware_Compatibility#USB_Flash_Drives Thanks again for a great video! :)

[@johnfragos7660]

You do understand that you are giving noob advice to someone that is a legend amongst UNRAID users :)

[@johnm2012]

@@johnfragos7660 Since he speaks from experience, it's a fair comment. However, I've never found a USB drive that doesn't have a GUID. I would expect all branded ones to have one. The ones to be wary of are the no-name giveaway drives or USB adaptors for micro SD cards.

[@Marzipanrider]

john fragos even legends do mistakes. I baught 2 of the San Disk Ultra Fit USB 3.1 Flash Drives from Amazon Germany and they had no UID and couldn‘t be used with unraid.

[@dogbog99]

@@Marzipanrider fakes

[@Springerr]

just a heads up the Samsung Fit Plus does not work for unraid. well, at least it doesn't work for me. it says it has a invalid GUID

[@hung10509]

I heard is best to use usb 2.0 for an Unraid os. Is that true? In your video, your first place is a USB 3.10.

[@fing_az]

Only from a view of unRAID supporting USB2 controllers better; there's the risk that unRAID won't support a particular USB3 controller- though at that point, putting a USB3 pendrive into a USB2 port is fine 👍

[@ADavidHD]

I remember the reason was that generally usb 3.0 drives get hotter so it was a longevity reason. But since the Samsung BAR 3.1 doesn't get very hot, then that reason should not be a problem. I'm going to upgrade to it! Best of luck

[@jtrevathan33]

Thanks for the video but I have a couple of problems with the testing methodology, mostly around temperature which I think will play a big role in failures. My reasoning is that most Unraid flash drives aren't being written to very often but they are continuously powered so the likely hood of reaching the write limit quickly is quite low but the effects of temperature will have years to set in. My thoughts on temp are that the temperatures that should be of the highest concern are the nand flash and controller temps. By measuring the outside you are getting a very inaccurate measurement, in fact I think your temp measurement is the inverse of what we want. Many of the plastic drives could have very high internal temps but the outside is cooler because the plastic acts like more of an insulator than the metal. Long term this could lead to additional wear that the metal drives don't experience since they are essentially built into a heat sync. Moreover, without disassembling the drives to see how the enclosure is attached no real correlation can be made from the external temperature reading. Also for the purpose of Unraid, I think looking at total amount of data read and written as compared to cycles would be beneficial (this info can be inferred from the data you showed I just think it should be front and center). While this isn't true for every use case, the Unraid flash drive won't be written to more if it is larger, thus a 32gb drive that can only handle 15 cycles before failure will actually last in the server longer than a 16gb drive that can handle 20 cycles as the 32gb drive will actually take 50% more total bits written to it before failure. All that said still a great video and one of the only true flash drive reviews out there. If anyone disagrees with my thoughts on the testing methodology let me know why. The goal after all, is to improve our understanding of what makes one flash drive better than another. Better testing will help with that.

[@sazma]

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "cycle." Does it mean you could only write to a given block 30x before failure? Also if you were running these tests simultaneously didn't you run out of USB3 bandwidth?