[The USB drive thread?]

20 minutes ago, trurl said:

No need to have it backed up to another flash drive. You can download a zipped backup and use that on another flash drive when needed.

 

Of course, if you change flash drives, however you do the backup, you have to transfer the license.

 

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.

[The USB drive thread?]

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.