PSA on SanDisk USBs

[eagle470]

@Kasi

 

Two things - 1) if uptime is supremely important I would recommend using a USB from swissbit or some other company that makes industrial grade USB's. you could buy a dell, cisco or HPE enterprise USB off ebay as well. Those will have A) a GUID (B) extremely long life as they are made to be in a server

 

2) Unraid is not billed for mission critical solutions. Limetech makes that very clear

 

[Lolight]

On 7/17/2023 at 8:40 PM, Kasi said:

Im just reading here in the thread that SanDisk "that they do not register a unique GUID" (post 1)

Please re-read that post.

According to @SpencerJ: "Either due to counterfeit devices being sold or a manufacturing change directly from SanDisk."

I'm not aware of any reports on anything related to SanDisk changing their manufacturing practices.

Besides it would make absolutely no sense for them to do such a thing.

 

It's been mentioned numerous times on this very thread that the online market (particularly Amazon) is flooded with counterfeit USB drives.

e.g. even by buying directly from the Amazon store instead of one of their third party sellers it would still give no guarantee of receiving the real thing due to Amazon's bin mixing practices.

 

The situation is not exclusive to SanDisk.

Every popular brand has its share of counterfeits floating around.

 

Therefore It's been recommended to only shop at big Brick-n-Mortar electronics stores in order minimize chances of getting a counterfeit USB drive.

Or even better, use one of the recommended industrial grade USBs.

 

There's no need to complicate this thread.

Fake USB drives are unreliable and prone to failure.

But you won't invalidate your license in any way, only introduce some downtime and an inconvenience of replacing the failed drive (hopefully with a real one this time) and transferring your license and configuration to a new USB drive with a different GUID.

 

The USB drive market has always been plagued by cheap counterfeits featuring redundant GUIDs, with many "victims" all over the world using them without a slightest suspicion that they've been scammed.

 

As opposed to users of Unraid where every USB drive must be checked for a unique, never used up with Unraid GUID.

 

Doesn't mean that Unraid has a unique ability to detect fakes.

It just cross-references the new drive GUID against the previously registered ones.

 

Makers of fakes don't bother to issue a unique GUID to every USB they produce.

That's how multiple fakes end up with batches of the same GUID.

Which still won't preclude Unraid from issuing a license to the first one to be registered out of that GUID batch.

But it will render the remaining ones unusable for Unraid.

 

You might want to test one out of your 3-pack to see how it performs:

 

https://whatsoftware.com/how-to-check-and-test-usb-flash-drive/

 

Also wonder what info is displayed in summary:

 

https://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbtreeview_e.html

Edited July 19, 2023 by Lolight

[ConnerVT]

10 hours ago, Lolight said:

The situation is not exclusive to SanDisk.

Every popular brand has its share of counterfeits floating around.

 

Therefore It's been recommended to only shop at big Brick-n-Mortar electronics stores in order minimize chances of getting a counterfeit USB drive.

Or even better, use one of the recommended industrial grade USBs.

 

One additional strategy -

Buy a new "old" model of a major, popular brand.

 

Counterfeiters aren't likely to knock off fakes of low capacity and/or "slow" USB2 flash drives.  There isn't any money in it, as the buying public is usually looking for "BIGGER!  FASTER!" drives.  There is little reason to use flash drives over 8GB for an Unraid boot drive - plenty of room for Unraid, and not best practice to use it for other storage as in increases wear and may reduce the drive's lifespan.

[eagle470]

4 hours ago, ConnerVT said:

 

One additional strategy -

Buy a new "old" model of a major, popular brand.

 

Counterfeiters aren't likely to knock off fakes of low capacity and/or "slow" USB2 flash drives.  There isn't any money in it, as the buying public is usually looking for "BIGGER!  FASTER!" drives.  There is little reason to use flash drives over 8GB for an Unraid boot drive - plenty of room for Unraid, and not best practice to use it for other storage as in increases wear and may reduce the drive's lifespan.

I go to bestbuy and buy the Samsung BAR Plus, what ever size I can get. 

It's there, it's REAL and it's easy.

[w1ll1ng]

As a newbie to Unraid, this entire thread is kinda bonkers.

 

I just walked out of a Microcenter, yesterday, with a short form-factor Sandisk USB drive, and I'm here because I have the same problem as everyone else:  the USB flash creator doesn't work.  Is someone going to tell me that Microcenter is selling counterfeit products?  Reading in this thread how unraid users are recommended to agonize over their selection of a usb stick is seemingly antithetical to the entire premise of unraid, which I thought was: use any old hardware and it just works.

 

At some point, there's going to be a market-driven solution to this problem: there will be no (market for) USB sticks that fit the requirements, and unraid will have to change. That is basically the take-away from this thread: the market is almost there.

[itimpi]

10 minutes ago, w1ll1ng said:

the USB flash creator doesn't work.  Is someone going to tell me that Microcenter is selling counterfeit products?

 If it is simply not working rather than telling you that the flash drive does not have a unique GUID then try using the Manual Install method that is far more reliable than the USB Creator tool which seems to fail on some systems for no obvious reason.

 

[w1ll1ng]

3 minutes ago, itimpi said:

 If it is simply not working rather than telling you that the flash drive does not have a unique GUID then try using the Manual Install method that is far more reliable than the USB Creator tool which seems to fail on some systems for no obvious reason.

 

I'm sorry; yes, I meant that it says "incompatible."

[itimpi]

6 minutes ago, w1ll1ng said:

I'm sorry; yes, I meant that it says "incompatible."

I think that means that the Manual method may still work.   I personally never use the USB Creator tool so I am not certain.

[ConnerVT]

Some USB sticks come pre-formatted in funky manner - May have extra partitions which contain backup software, or are just generally strange.  I've seen the USB creator tool tends to have issues with this.

 

Wiping the drive clear of all partitions (Windows Administrative Tools -> Computer Management -> Storage -> Disk Management) will usually remedy the issue.

 

Note this not only happens with Unraid's USB Creator.  I have had similar issues using the Raspberry Pi Imager, Rufus and other ISO type imagers as well.

[ConnerVT]

1 hour ago, w1ll1ng said:

Is someone going to tell me that Microcenter is selling counterfeit products? 

 

In your case, probably not (see my post above).  But Microcenter, like any retailer, is only as good as their supply chain practices.

 

Ten years ago, you would have said the same thing about Newegg.  But now that they have become a "marketplace" reseller (as is Amazon), products can be intermingled.  I'm sure that Microcenter does not deal with SanDisk and Samsung directly, but buy commodity products such as flash drives from a wholesaler.  And these types of products are usually bought looking at who has the lowest price at the time of the order.

 

If you buy a RX4090 from Microcenter, odds are better than 99.9% it would be genuine.  can't say the same for a $10 flash drive.

 

I work in semiconductor manufacturing.  each year I need to re-certify a training on secure supply chain logistics.  Counterfeiting is a big issue in the industry.

[Lolight]

6 hours ago, ConnerVT said:

Wiping the drive clear of all partitions (Windows Administrative Tools -> Computer Management -> Storage -> Disk Management) will usually remedy the issue.

That's a very good advice and should be followed by everyone after purchasing new USB flash media.

[w1ll1ng]

Is there a separate thread or discussion that clarifies how you identify that the USB flash stick is dying or the root of the problems?

 

I'm already using a cheap flash drive, similar to the PNY-manufactured HP-branded one mentioned earlier in this thread.  Since it works, I suppose I won't "fix" it with a different one.  It'd be nice to be able to clearly identify when the USB stick becomes the problem, though.

[Lolight]

13 hours ago, w1ll1ng said:

It'd be nice to be able to clearly identify when the USB stick becomes the problem, though.

It becomes the problem when Unraid refuses to boot, save or retain configuration changes.

There's a bunch of utilities you can use to identify and screen out problematic USB drives.

 

https://whatsoftware.com/how-to-check-and-test-usb-flash-drive/

[localcatperson]

So - like the last post on this thread here...

 

 

I received the same (incompatible) with my Windows 10 machine, but a GUID with my wife's MacBook using the USB Creator.

 

Is there something MacOS is doing to generate a GUID? I may have glossed over it catching up to this point. If anyone else runs into the issue and still wants to risk it then the MacOS USB creator will potentially let you do it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Edit: I tested two out of the five drives in the pack I purchased with Check Flash 1.17.0 - Both appear to be genuine SanDisk products. I just transferred to one of them as my boot drive which is partially how I came across this thread. It seems fair to say that despite fakes legitimately being in circulation that the Windows USB Creator may have some bugs as well.

Edited August 8, 2023 by localcatperson
Update - performed testing

[itimpi]

4 hours ago, localcatperson said:

I received the same (incompatible) with my Windows 10 machine, but a GUID with my wife's MacBook using the USB Creator.

 

This is an issue with the USB Creator tool on some systems (i.e. not a GUID issue).    Using the Manual install method in such a case.

 

4 hours ago, localcatperson said:

Is there something MacOS is doing to generate a GUID?

No - the GUID is built into the hardware.   It is just that the MacOS version of the tool successfully read it off the flash drive.

[sonofdbn]

On 8/9/2023 at 4:32 AM, itimpi said:

 

This is an issue with the USB Creator tool on some systems (i.e. not a GUID issue).    Using the Manual install method in such a case.

 

Can the Manual Install method be used with a flash drive backup zip file (and not just downloaded OS zip files)? For those wondering, the use case is when you need to replace a failing flash drive.

[itimpi]

1 hour ago, sonofdbn said:

 

Can the Manual Install method be used with a flash drive backup zip file (and not just downloaded OS zip files)? For those wondering, the use case is when you need to replace a failing flash drive.

Yes.   I would start by downloading the OS Zip files to get the flash drive bootable and then afterwards extract the backup files on top of the flash drive contents to get your settings etc in place.

[Mattaton]

Slightly off-topic, but is there any truth or evidence to the claims where people have used SD cards in USB readers/adapters or SSDs connected with USB cables? Supposedly unRAID pulls the ID of the reader or SSD holder/connector and registers that which then allows the user to swap the SD card or SSD if it goes bad. So as long as the reader or holder/connector is good, then unRAID is "happy."

If this indeed works, it sure takes a lot of the headache out of swapping flash drives. Just pop out the bad SD card, restore to a new one and you're good to go.

 

I haven't tried it, but I do have an external enclosure for NVMe SSDs. When I connect it to my Windows machine, it sees the enclosure as the device and not the SSD. Maybe that's how unRAID would see it, too? If it has a GUID, you're golden?

When I connect the enclosure, it gives Vendor, Product, and Serial Number. Although the serial number doesn't seem quite unique: 012345678930  So, yeah, probably not with this.

I just plugged an SD card into a little USB reader/adapter. The reader comes up with a more unique serial, but still nowhere near the length of the serial on a flash drive.

Vendor ID : 0x0BDA (Realtek Semiconductor Corp.)

Product ID : 0x0120

Serial: 200604130921XXXXX

[Hoopster]

On 11/26/2023 at 12:18 PM, Mattaton said:

there any truth or evidence to the claims where people have used SD cards in USB readers/adapters or SSDs connected with USB cables? Supposedly unRAID pulls the ID of the reader or SSD holder/connector and registers that which then allows the user to swap the SD card or SSD if it goes bad. So as long as the reader or holder/connector is good, then unRAID is "happy."

If this indeed works, it sure takes a lot of the headache out of swapping flash drives. Just pop out the bad SD card, restore to a new one and you're good to go.

This is exactly what I do.  Two of my three Unraid servers use Kingston Mobilite G2 or G3 (no longer available) card readers for the Unraid flash drive.  I use the other slot in the card reader for the syslog.  Been using these readers for 10+ years with no issues.

[Mattaton]

5 minutes ago, Hoopster said:

This is exactly what I do.  Two of my three Unraid servers use Kingston Mobilite G2 or G3 (no longer available) card readers for the Unraid flash drive.  I use the other slot in the card reader for the syslog.  Been using these readers for 10+ years with no issues.

Ah man. That's awesome, but a shame they aren't available any longer. Any suggestions on alternatives?

[Hoopster]

17 minutes ago, Mattaton said:

Ah man. That's awesome, but a shame they aren't available any longer. Any suggestions on alternatives?

You might find them on eBay. 

 

Also, there is an older thread in these forums on card readers that have a unique GUID and work with Unraid.  I will link it when I find it but I am headed out the door right now for a few hours.

[Mattaton]

10 hours ago, Hoopster said:

You might find them on eBay. 

 

Also, there is an older thread in these forums on card readers that have a unique GUID and work with Unraid.  I will link it when I find it but I am headed out the door right now for a few hours.

Nice. I was able to find one on eBay. Looking forward to giving this a shot. 🙂 

P.S.: "Vacation Home"....I'm jelly 😄 

Edited November 28, 2023 by Mattaton

[ChatNoir]

Note that if the reader has already been used and registered for Unraid, you will not be able to assign your licence to its GUID.

[Mattaton]

2 minutes ago, ChatNoir said:

Note that if the reader has already been used and registered for Unraid, you will not be able to assign your licence to its GUID.

They're supposedly brand new, in-box. So I hope this won't be an issue for me. But yes, you're right. Thanks!

[ConnerVT]

I believe what ChatNoir was getting at is there's a difference between a card reader providing a GUID vs one that provides a unique GUID.

 

This is what is at the root of the issue that this thread discusses.  Many of the counterfeit flash drives don't bother to burn in a unique serial number, but rather just put the same number on every one they crank out (when they bother to do so at all).  These drives work in Unraid for the first person who registers it.  The second person (and everyone else that tries) is out of luck.