Lolight

You're exactly right. Assuming the stick was made and purchased around 2007, it likely contains a large-node MLC flash chip—either 70nm or 56nm—paired with a low-power, thermally efficient controller Those are indestructible in the Unraid environment. No wonder they're still running in your machines.

Hello, Yahoo (🤬) has recently revoked access to my email that I've used to create this forum account. Obviously I'm still able to log into this forum for now. But it creates an uncertainty that might not allow me to re-log in the case if I ever need to receive an email confirmation for security reasons. The forum account settings by default don't allow me to edit the attached email account. May I ask for the administrator's help here? Thank you.

It's a tricky situation... It might be a far better choice to go with an older, no-brand or lesser-known brand USB 2.0 drive. As compared to a freshly purchased (especially if shopping online) drive of a well-known brand/model - those are counterfeited the most. Make sure to go with USB 2.0 and not USB 3.X - it's not easy to find them anymore.

Fakes are not all the same. The absence of a GUID is a sure sign of a fake and will be immediately detected. But they also come in many other different flavors as is the case with duplicate GUIDs when batches of hundreds or even thousands of drives contain the exact same GUID. In that case you won't even know that you gotten one if you happened to be the first user to have registered such a USB with Unraid.

Thanks. But the biggest problem here is that the make/model info sharing is not helpful anymore in determining the quality of a USB drive since the markets all over the world are flooded with fakes.

Sorry but I have to disagree. As I've stated before in this very thread... The referenced USB-related test video by SpaceInvaderOne is very outdated, performed with unrelated to the Unraid's environment methodology and therefore neither helpful or awesome. It's actually rather misleading in view of all information that has become available since its publishing date. I've stated my reasons before and not going to repeat them again on why that video test is simply "no good". I've commented before that the USB video is in the urgent need of an update. And now seeing that SpencerJ is planning a re-make! 👍 👏

Yeah, the feature sets look slightly different due to editing inconsistency. But in reality they're exactly the same across the tiers. At least as far as I know...

ZFS has become a must have option in this marketplace. Not necessarily from every half-informed potential customer point of view. But IMO LimeTech simply had no choice but to implement it. Otherwise every devoted TrueNas proponent would continue bad mouth Unraid on every home NAS board with their constant FUD on the dangers of bitrot and how Unraid would "loose your family pictures".

I'm not quite sure but I think I've heard somewhere that LimeTech would allow you to purchase the legacy license in this situation. @SpencerJ is that correct?

But then again, what would you get as an alternative in this hypothetical situation? Everyone is going through this exact process while "shopping" around and in the end gets something that meets one's needs. And as it's already been stated here before, there's a reason why so many people were/are choosing to pay for Unraid instead of getting a free alternative.

He meant that the referenced board has many more SATA ports that the CPU itself can support. That's why the board feature a separate third-party SATA controller - JMB585. The problem with those is that they don't play nice with the CPU's low power modes called C-states. The author of the video described it as a "perfect" home server, but that is in his view. Doesn't meant that you can't do better. You can achieve better power efficiency doing it differently.

And not a word on those two shortcomings (to put it lightly), anywhere in Unraid Docs. Not to mention junky controller design of many USB 3.x devices combined with the standard's increased max bus power (=heat) - from 500 mA in USB 2.0 to 900 mA in USB 3.0.

I've given that advice strictly from the try-n-see perspective and my understanding of the CPU power management and general BIOS options tuning. I don't use the power saving settings in the plugin - can't say what it would do.

Yeah, Intel have artificially removed ECC compatibility from the non-business sector of the market. Therefore making its implementation far more costly than it would be otherwise. But IMO, ECC RAM is not critical and doesn't need to be used in a home NAS environment. The decision to stick to it makes it a personal choice. That's all I'm going to say.... (not here to start a war over ECC and its place in a home NAS).

Sure, ECC compatibility if desired will force you into the W680. I've been running an old Asus B250 - it has all I need.

My understanding is that the iGPU shouldn't be affected (I don't transcode). Yeah, you should not have problems running those. You might want to enable turbo boosting and see how it affects your C-state (it should not).

Every legit USB drive comes with a unique GUID, regardless of the generational standard. Therefore has no relation to Unraid requirements for having a unique GUID. The actual USB key quality and its hardware implementation is the big variable that should be addressed by the end user. I can see where your uneasiness comes from in regards of the reported issues associated with USB keys troubles. And I'd agree with you on the need for an official take and recommendation published directly by LimeTech. As it stands now, their Sandisk related PSA statement remains in the same form as when it has been published 2 years ago. They also link the outdated and by now quite mis-leading recommendation for a reliable boot device in the form of the Spaceinvader's USB test which should have been updated by Spaceinvader by now and if not then removed altogether in the view of the available by now evidence. It doesn't provide any favors to newcomers when they're being forced to read through multiple pages of the PSA thread just to get a general idea of the issues involved. The Unraid's FAQ section should also need to be updated with a clear recommendation on the USB standards and a clear warning of the widespread counterfeited product and avoidance measures.

The vast majority of consumer boards with maintained BIOS support (Asus, Asrock, Gigabyte, MSI etc) are designed and capable of securely running 24/7. There's absolutely no advantage in choosing the W680 based boards over others, unless you require their unique features. Features that are not available in the consumer chipset boards. And If you don't need/use those then you're overpaying for increased complexity and power consumption.

Welcome! Try to enable "Race To Halt" and "Energy efficient turbo".

Sure, the point being that it's much easier to achieve good idle efficiency on the simple consumer boards.

Yeah, and in general, if you're after idle efficiency, then stay away from any W680 board, not just the one discussed in this thread.

In "C-States control" choose C10, also do In "Package C-State limit" Enable "Platform Power Management" and then configure the available ASPM entries. Also enable "S3 Save mode", "ErP" and "RC6"

You could also refer to this post and scroll down to "Nvidia GPU Hardware Transcoding Deep Dive":

Here's with pictures, detailed by @PhilBarker (just in case if my post above doesn't link to the intended post): https://docs.phil-barker.com/posts/upgrading-ASM1166-firmware-for-unraid/

It looks like he runs only one stick. In that case @Konnor378 should try to change to another RAM socket. If no change then try another RAM stick.