Taurondir

Oh ok, did not know that. I'm just throwing the idea of running FreeNAS and also Unraid for playing around with, and I dont think the $65 or whatever AU dollars are for Unraid are a terrible compromise, although I was worried about how Unraid "stores" the key, because If something totally RNG happens I can't get to that key, does it means I cant get to my "data" until I figure it out? Can you just plug the disks into another machine and read them? I mean its NOT terribly important as there wont be any "vital" data there and I'm not going the whole "redudancy and safety" route as I wont be running a "storage system", its going to be something that I just prod and poke at random times to see how it can dance, like checking appliances and Virtual Machines and what not. If I ever decide to make a "proper setup" I'd get a 6-8 core setup, 16--32 GB of memory and a bunch of actual drives to string together but yea, I think all my actual important life data can probably just fit on a 32GB flash drive at this stage, and I'm just using DropBox to stash that.

I arrived into this discussion from another angle, but I thought i'd add to it: I basically work as a PC tech, so I keep buying random flash drives to move stuff about and occasionally to reinstall OS's on random stuff I need to test or play with. I have a tendency to just go "to a local store" and around here in Australia it's places like Kmart, Coles, Woolworths. Kmart has Verbatim USB Drives, and I have a bunch of sizes from different times, largest is a couple of 64GB (because they went on sale) and they booted fine on what I have just laying on a desk right now (Core 2 Quad 6600 socket 775, on a Gigabyte G31M-S2L) and also was booting on 3 other customer machines (various ages) I did recently, and it boots on my TUF X470-Plus AMD mobo. My motto has basically been that local stores like Coles/Kmart have a 1Y "no fuss" replacement policy on cheap items, so when it comes to things like USB drives I can just buy a single one, do a bunch of tests for my needs - ie boot drives for installations - and if they work, go back and buy a bunch, and easily get it replaced if one RNG fails - they wont even blink funny as long as you have BOTH the packaging AND the receipt - within the 1Y warranty. I mean, every 1-2 you will find a drive twice the size at the same price, so why not get them if you have uses for them. If I decide to run Unraid (I'm thinking about it) id just have the "live stick" in all the time and I'd back it up to a removable clone (keep it unplugged to make it last longer) and just swap it in if I get an RNG failure on the live one. Get another stick to replace the dead, rinse and repeat.