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Posts posted by Miss_Sissy
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@FlamongOle: I've reinstalled it and it's working great! Thanks for the quick response at squashing these bugs.
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18 minutes ago, DecusAnima said:
here is a copy of the old disklocation plg file, dated 7-27-2024, but personally I would just wait for a rollback or patch
Thank you. I plan to wait, but I worry about others experiencing the unexplained (to them) loss of their Unraid dashboard after an update/autoupdate or new install of the Disk Location plugin. It's easy for a troubleshooting session to turn ugly and time consuming if the person is perplexed as to the cause of the problem in a complex system.
I don't want any of that to overshadow how grateful I am to FlamongOle for providing this valuable plugin. I look forward to this minor hiccup being resolved.
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13 minutes ago, mwoods98 said:
@Miss_Sissy is there an easy way to roll back to the previous version?
The only way that I know of is if you have a copy of the old .plg file. I do not have that.
That is why I recommended that FlamongOle roll back the version in the Unraid repository.
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15 hours ago, elitexero said:
Just a heads up that my dashboard stopped working after the latest update was pushed. Once I removed the plugin it came back, so it's not playing nice with something. I don't see anything in logs, latest stable Unraid 6.12.13.
I am also running Unraid 6.12.13 and my dashboard also went blank after installing the latest update to Disk Location plugin.
- Safari and Chrome both showed a blank dashboard.
- I tried rebooting my Unraid NAS, but that had no effect on the blank dashboard issue.
- As soon as I uninstalled the Disk Location plugin, the dashboard returned to normal (minus the disk location graphic, of course).
- Reinstalling the Disk Location plugin resulted in the same issue -- a blank dashboard.
FlamongOle, I recommend that you remove this latest version and restore the prior one in Unraid's repository until the root cause of this issue is discovered and resolved. Lacking any on-screen clues as to the cause of the blank dashboard, there's too much chance of someone wasting a lot of time with memory testing, flash drive rewriting/replacement, array parity checks, etc.
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2 hours ago, adoucette said:
Was happy with USB flash until two of the recommended name-brand USB drives used in Unraid failed in quick succession. Now I'm pretty happy with using a USB SSD with my Unraid.
I think that's a solid choice.
I have nothing against mass-market flash drives; I have a small tackle box filled with them (currently 19 drives in it, but some scattered about the house). They are fine for transitory, non-critical applications such as installing the Linux-du-jour or moving data to air-gapped systems.
3 hours ago, adoucette said:That said, to each their own on hardware choices.
I agree, and I try to live by the rule "if you don't criticize my choices, I won't criticize yours."
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26 minutes ago, Espressomatic said:
Hmmm... You're putting the same amount of faith in that $60 snake-oil USB key that I place in the $5 Sandisk.
I have a lot more faith in Sandisk than some unknown company selling a magic-bean USB key.
That's like you telling a professional photographer "I have a lot more faith in Kodak that some unknown company named 'Leica' selling a magic-bean camera."
ATP has been around since 1991, focusing on the industrial marketplace since 2011. They are sold by Mouser, DigiKey, and Avnet, all of which cater to professional electrical engineers. There's nothing "snake-oil" about ATP's industrial drives, as any competent EE could tell you. Their SLC NAND, SSD-style controllers, performance, endurance, MTBF, extended temperature range, etc. are all in line with competing drives from Swissbit, Delkin Devices, and Amtron (let me guess -- you also think that those are 'unknown companies' selling "snake-oil USB keys").
1 hour ago, Espressomatic said:What I'm telling you is that my systems don't go down.
I can't argue with such rigorous stastical analysis carried out on such a large sample set.
1 hour ago, Espressomatic said:If you value uptime, split apart your Unraid system and have at least a few extra USB keys on-hand.
Having more NASs doesn't increase uptime. It decreases it. You might take out fewer services down when one NAS fails, but more boxes doesn't lead to less downtime. If the NAS supporting your security cameras fails while you are on travel, it will be of little comfort to know that your Plex media server is still up and running.
Having spare USB flash drives at home does no good if you are not at home to flash and install them. Don't you ever travel? Can't you imagine being out of town for business, a vacation, a wedding, or a funeral?
1 hour ago, Espressomatic said:So, again and 1000x over, I'd rather have 12 $5 USB keys than a single $60 key.
Some people would rather have a toolbox drawer full of $.88 Chinese screwdrivers than one set of Snap On screwdrivers. To each his/her own.
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1 hour ago, Espressomatic said:
That's part of my point. Amazon, click, $5, next morning it's here.
So the inconvenience and frustration of your NAS going down in an unscheduled manner, not to mention your actual labor, is worth less than $60 to you?
I'd happily pay an extra couple of hundred dollars to avoid that situation, partly because the failure could happen while I was out of town for business, a wedding or a funeral, or on vacation. I cringe at the thought of writing something like this:
"It sounds like the NAS thumb drive is corrupt. I can fix it when I return home next Wednesday. Until then, all backups to the NAS will fail. Bitwarden password additions and changes won't sync between devices. You won't be able to access any of the home security cameras because they rely on Shinobi Pro which runs on the Unraid NAS. All of our movies and TV shows on the Plex server will inaccessible. Our shared music library will also be inaccessible. You won't have access to any of your files, or our shared files, that are only on the NAS and you won't be able to write new ones to it. I'm sure that there are other things out of commission that I have not thought of. But I saved $60 on our $1,600 NAS! Aren't you proud of me?"
Yeah, that would go over like a lead balloon.
QuoteSame USB key since 2018 and it's going to last longer than me.
That's what I call "faith-based engineering." I don't do that.
If I didn't care about reliability and maximizing up-time, I would not have five 18TB enterprise class drives in a RAIDZ2 configuration. Any two of those drives can fail without the NAS going down, but the boot flash drive is a single point of failure, so I'm sure not going to cheap out on that device.
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46 minutes ago, Espressomatic said:
If all 4 of my current Unraid systems have USB drive failures on a regular basis and each time I replace with a new drive, it'll cost me less than $60 over 30-40 years.
What is your time worth?
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7 hours ago, ConnerVT said:
And you have data to support that the corruption was due to NAND memory cells losing their stored data charge from not being accessed for several years?
I am not up for a game of 'here's my anecdote -- where is your data?'This has dragged on too long already, likely to the annoyance of others. Let's drop it before the moderators ask us to.
In closing, buy whatever flash drive you want. For me, the best choice was the 4GB ATP NANODURA SLC industrial drive. For you, it might be something else.
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18 minutes ago, DanielCoffey said:
I assume you were looking at the 4Gb B800Pi SLC model instead of the B600Sc MLC, yes?
Yes, I bought the 4GB B800Pi model ATP NANODURA drive. Unraid's flashing utility recognized it by brand and model and wrote to it without any issues.
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3 hours ago, ConnerVT said:
For I can't recall ever reading someone saying "My almost 10 year old flash drive has a corrupted file..." similar to a bit rot scenario.
That's probably because people normally use flash drives for as sneaker-net-style media rather than archival storage. That said, the Unraid forums are filled with messages about data corruption on flash drives.
QuoteI simple and cheaper solution, for those concerned, would be to back up your flash drive, reformat, then restore the backup on it. Wouldn't even require a new key file as the GUID remains the same.
It's an improvement over a write-once strategy, even though it does nothing to address wear levelling. But you can't start with a $7 thumb drive and then format and rewrite your way to SLC industrial drive levels of endurance, data retention, and lifespan.
For me, paying $67 for the ATP NANODURA industrial drive and then formatting and writing it just one time made the most sense. Both my peace of mind and my time have value. Also, I'd feel pretty stupid if a failed $7 consumer thumb drive took down a $1600+ Unraid NAS that I built to survive two simultaneous hard drive failures.
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5 hours ago, ConnerVT said:
Veering off topic here, but this can apply to SSD drives as well, as both are using basically the same NAND technologies.
But the difference is that SSDs employ sophisticated controllers with functions like "patrol read" to refresh data cells before they become unreadable:
QuotePatrol Read identifies weak or problematic areas and performs necessary maintenance tasks, such as refreshing data cells and relocating data to healthier parts of the drive. This proactive approach helps to extend the lifespan of the SSD and enhance its performance by mitigating potential issues before they become critical.
The above quote from this article:
https://www.ssstc.com/knowledge-detail/patrol-read-ssd-integrity/
Obviously that won't work on an SSD that's sitting unpowered in a drawer for a decade, but if you power it on, even if just occasionally, it can perform that sort of self-repair.
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42 minutes ago, ConnerVT said:
I believe this to be 10 years unpowered, as in sitting in a drawer of your desk.
That’s up to 10 years, whether powered or unpowered.
As you no doubt know, being powered doesn’t slow the charge leakage within the NAND cells. Nor does reading the data. You really need to rewrite the data in order to refresh it.
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1 hour ago, SteveScott said:
I am almost certain that my SanDisk is not counterfeit...
Conventional flash drives (AKA thumb drives), including geniuine SanDisk, are not designed for long-term data storage. As Integral Memory's website says:
QuoteMemory cards and USB drives are NOT designed for long term storage. You should always backup your data on to another device. The data will normally stay valid for a period of up to 10 years if stored under normal conditions. The data cells inside carry a charge which can dissipate over time.
Note the highlighting, which is mine. While 10 years sounds like long time, "up to 10 years" could be far less. I'm risk-averse when it comes to NAS reliability, so I went with the ATP NANODURA, which I mentioned in a post above.
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2 minutes ago, adoucette said:
Sounds fancy! How was the unraid activation, and how is its performance?
4GB seems like enough storage (I'm using 1.15GB with a lot installed and running).
Sounds fancy and looks plain. It's largely bare metal, which aids heat dissipation. It's a product designed by engineers rather than styled by marketers, and I like that.
Unraid activation was problem-free with Unraid's flashing utility recognizing the make as ATP and the model as NANODURA. The GUID was accepted without issue.
It's published speed specs are sequential read at up to 19MByte/s and sequential write up to 17MByte/s, which seem in line with my casual observations. It's not a high-speed drive and has a USB 2.0 interface, but Unraid's boot image is small and the drive doesn't seem to slow anything down.
I was right around 1GB, too, so this is plenty of storage for my Unraid server.
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On 10/4/2024 at 7:10 AM, andrebrait said:
So far, I've had great luck with the Transcend JetFlash 780 MLC line.
I have them running on two unRAID machines for over a year now (specifically the 8GB version, TS8GJF780).
Their flash is supposed to have higher endurance due to being MLC instead of TLC or QLC.
Seeing more notifications from this thread spurred me into action. I placed an order today with DigiKey for an ATP NANODURA 4GB, SLC-based, USB 2.0 industrial flash drive. It supports the S.M.A.R.T ATA feature set, has ECC, wear leveling, an endurance of up to 48TB/96TB (random and sequential write respectively) and 60,000 program/erase cycles. It has an MTBF in excess of five million hours at 25 degrees C and an operating temperature range 0f -40C to 85C. (See complete specs in attached PDFs.)
It costs $67 USD, including shipping and sales tax, which is less than some competing drives from Swissbit and Apacer. It's also a modest investment compared to the overall hardware cost of my Unraid NAS (5 x 18TB Seagate Exos drives, a pair of 2280 form factor SSDs, case, power supply, motherboard, RAM, cables, etc.).
To each his or her own; I'm just sharing my choice, not telling others that their choices are wrong.
nanodura-trade-series-spec.pdf ATP NANODURA technical specs.pdf
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6 hours ago, ConnerVT said:
I strongly doubt this is the issue.There are people who strongly doubt that we actually landed a man on the moon, but it doesn't make it any less true. 😀
6 hours ago, ConnerVT said:The GUID is how the flash drive manufacturers can track where/when a device was assembled and, in turn, which suppliers provided the components for that device. It a the device's serial/lot number. The GUID is more useful to the manufacturer than it is to the typical end user. At least, if you are a reputable manufacturer.
When you return a failed $7 thumb drive to Amazon, Best Buy, Target, etc., it does not get flown back to China, South Korea, etc. for failure analysis and teardown. It either gets tossed in the trash or sold on a pallet full of untested customer returns.
6 hours ago, ConnerVT said:A post COVID glut of memory chips, sanctions on Chinese semiconductor products, and an overall drop in off-shore manufacturing orders have made it much easier for fly-by-night outfits to make counterfeit flash drives with lower grade chips. Online marketplaces like Amazon, Newegg, eBay and Alibaba help launder the fake with the genuine. There is no need to bother generating a unique GUID, as those making the flash drive will never see it again once it is out of their door.
No manufacturer sees $7 flash drives again after they leave the factory, whether they are genuine or counterfeit.
Limetech said that they don't know if the non-serialized (via GUID) SanDisk flash drives are genuine or counterfeit, but SanDisk will not respond to them. Do you have information indicating that genuine SanDisk thumb drives all still have unique GUIDs?5 hours ago, ConnerVT said:You see counterfeit Rolex, but ever see a fake Timex?
https://exceptionaltiming.com/15-ways-to-know-if-a-timex-watch-is-an-original/
But I agree with that general point you were making about the price. I could understand counterfeiting high capacity thumb drives, where the retail price is high enough to make it worthwhile. But Best Buy has a 32GB SanDisk - Cruzer Glide thumb drive for $7.19. I'm just not seeing any real margin at that end of the market, especially since the counterfeiters would have to amortize the cost of molds over such a small number of drives (relative to what SanDisk sells).
If you are a Chinese counterfeiter, you're much better off remarking $0.50 NE5532 opamps as something like $6 OPA2134s. No retail packaging required. No plastic molds. Hundreds of them can be shipped in a few IC tubes. And there is almost zero chance they will be spotted as counterfeit at the port of entry.
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1 hour ago, Frank1940 said:
The reason for no separate thread is that there are hundreds (if not thousands) of flash drive brands that do have have unique GUID and the list grows daily. And those brands can disappear just as quickly.
Even some flash drive models that had unique GUIDs in the past now do not, likely due to late-stage capitalism squeezing manufacturers to save fractions of pennies per unit.
(Should we start a thread listing models of computer cases that do not have removable drive caddies?)
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32 minutes ago, Elmojo said:
Which is precisely my point.
I must have missed that part of your earlier message.
32 minutes ago, Elmojo said:Because as with all products, you generally only hear from the complaint department. Happy customers are quiet customers. I have no doubt that some drives fail, but I highly doubt it's a widespread problem affecting a significant portion of the user base.
Didn't you write that USB flash drive failure is a foregone conclusion ("When (not if) they fail") under Unraid?
32 minutes ago, Elmojo said:You should not be using unraid for such things. Or if you do, you should also have backup a server(s) in place to serve as failover, just as in a real production environment.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, but I have locally hosted public and private network services for over 23 years.
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3 hours ago, Elmojo said:
That's an absolutely insane price for a 4GB flash device, regardless of whether it's "industrial" or not.
Competing 4GB industrial, SLC drives from Amtron, Delkin, and Innodisk range in price from $58 to $86. If those were 'insane prices,' Avnet, DigiKey, and Mouser would not carry such products since those distributors cater to engineers who know what products like those should cost.
It's a SLC-based SSD with 10-year data retention, 60,000 program/erase cycle endurance, and an MTBF of >5,000,000 hours. It has a real SSD controller with wear leveling. It's a completely different class of device than a mass-market thumb drive.
3 hours ago, Elmojo said:The fact is, flash devices are fairly robust, as long as they're not bottom-tier garbage to begin with.
Then why do so many people with name-brand, consumer-grade flash drives report failures when using them as Unraid boot drives? Unraid is not an application that writes much to the drives.
3 hours ago, Elmojo said:When (not if) they fail, you just replace it using the rather simple process built into unraid. I think folks (myself included) are making a bigger deal than necessary about the flash boot drive needing to be rock solid nuclear proof. I just don't see it being needed. Buy a decent drive, run it until it dies, replace it, move on.
Is there a hidden danger of data loss here I'm not seeing? Does the LimeTech replacement process not work well? I've only had to do it twice, and both times, it worked just fine.
It works fine if you're sitting at home with time to kill when you notice the failure. But what do you do if you are on travel and get a panicked call from your spouse saying they can't access files on the NAS they need for their work? What if you're running a public-facing mail server, web server, or FTP server?
I'm not trying to convince you to move to a high-reliability/longevity industrial SLC drive if you don't feel that you need it.
But the price of the recommended drive is not at all out of line for that class and capacity of storage device.
☮️
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On 5/22/2024 at 1:23 AM, nickp85 said:
I had two Samsung Fit 32GB USB3 drives and they both failed within a year, one time I had to get Unraid support involved to get a new key since it had been less than 12 months. They just burn themselves out with consistent use and are too small to be properly cooled. Ended up going with a tried and true Kingston 16GB USB2 metal stick and it's been rock solid now for years. My coworker also had multiple Samsung Fit USB3 fail on him in about the same time period.
That’s exactly my point: Samsung has the flash tech to make long-lived USB drives, but they only offer it in their PRO Endurance line of MicroSDXC cards. That’s probably because most USB flash drive buyers care only about speed and price, not longevity.
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19 minutes ago, NeoJoris said:
Those are expensieve!
Came here looking for a replacement recommendation after seeing that my newly acquired Sandisk Ultra Fit wont work anymore...
The search continues...
In the U.S. they are not very expensive, with the 4GB version selling for about $55 (U.S. dollars) on DigiKey.
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2 hours ago, Frank1940 said:
I can see a problem with that licensed flash drive being moved from server to server for the just the boot process.
I never suggested that there just be a one-time check at boot time. Unraid could periodically, or randomly, read the GUID while it was in operation. In fact, I proposed using a USB flash drive that might mot even be formatted and writable — it would just be the source of a GUID.
QuoteThere would have to be code written to check that flash drive with the GUID remained plugged in at all times. This could be a source of wear on the drive...
Absolutely unacceptable.
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25 minutes ago, Mattaton said:
Nothing you said is wrong. Agree with all of it. Definitely would love to use something other than USB for boot.
Per my understanding (I could be wrong), the boot drive is only accessed at boot or when plugins are installed, updated, that sort of thing.
So for 99% uptime servers, flash reliability from wear isn't really an issue.
I've been using a Toshiba 16GB USB 2.0 flash drive on my current Unraid server. It self-identifies as "TransMemory" and the drive's pronoun is "it." If the drive becomes non-binary, I have a real problem, but at least no one has to worry about which restroom it uses.
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PSA on SanDisk USBs
in Announcements
Posted
I recommend the ATP NANODURA 4GB, SLC-based, USB 2.0 industrial flash drive, an industrial drive with a rated endurance of 48TB/96TB (random and sequential write respectively) and 60,000 program/erase cycles. It has an MTBF in excess of five million hours at 25 degrees C and an operating temperature range 0f -40C to 85C. I paid $67 to DigiKey for mine, including taxes and shipping. Competing industrial SLC NAND flash drives from Delkin, SwissBit, Apacer and others are worth considering if you prefer a different brand (the prices are all very similar). All are sold through professional electronics distributors like DigiKey, Mouser, and Newark Electronics.
If you prefer more general advice, look for SLC NAND flash drives. Avoid drives using MLC, TLC, and QLC NAND, as well as any drive where the NAND technology is not advertised. MLC, TLC, and QLC NAND each has only a fraction of the endurance of SLC NAND as illustrated in this chart from Kingston Technology:
Note: While the ATP NANODURA is rated for "only" 60K P/E cycles, industrial electronic devices usually have specs that are much more conservative than the best-case sort of thing shown in that chart.