FreeNAS - USB or SSD boot device?

Gimpymoo

Gimpymoo

Gimpymoo

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I understand the "official" advice is to raid USB flash drives but does this come from a time when SSD/HDD prices were too high to use for such small active use?

Does the advice still hold true or with lowering of SSD prices, is using an SSD now viable comapred to temperamental flash drives.

One reason I can see is that "losing" a SATA port can be an issue.
 
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The advantage of using a USB flash drive is you free up a SATA/SAS slot. I'm using a SATA SSD in my rig but went with Linux rather than FreeNAS cos I wanna run some VMs on there too. If you're literally just running FreeNAS I can't see why it'd be a problem using a USB flash drive. The other alternative, which also frees up a SATA/SAS port, is to use an M.2 SSD as a boot drive, if your motherboard has that slot.
 
DragonQ said:
The other alternative, which also frees up a SATA/SAS port, is to use an M.2 SSD as a boot drive, if your motherboard has that slot.
Click to expand...

Given a decent HBA such as the Dell H310 costs bugger all, and using an m2 slot tends to be at the cost of one-two SATA ports, I really would’t suggest anyone wanting to save an SATA port goes that route without checking the board manual first, otherwise it could be an expensive and pointless exercise.
 
Avalon said:
Given a decent HBA such as the Dell H310 costs bugger all, and using an m2 slot tends to be at the cost of one-two SATA ports, I really would’t suggest anyone wanting to save an SATA port goes that route without checking the board manual first, otherwise it could be an expensive and pointless exercise.
Click to expand...
Good point, some M.2 slots (particularly secondary ones) share lanes with either PCIe slots or SATA ports.
 
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