On 10/4/2024 at 6:03 PM, Miss_Sissy said:

I placed an order today with DigiKey for an ATP NANODURA 4GB

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). 

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.

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:

 

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Memory 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.

Edited October 20, 20241 yr by Miss_Sissy

I believe this to be 10 years unpowered, as in sitting in a drawer of your desk.

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.  
 

 

Edited October 21, 20241 yr by Miss_Sissy
Brevity and clarity.

Veering off topic here, but this can apply to SSD drives as well, as both are using basically the same NAND technologies.

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:

 

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Patrol 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.

 

 

Edited October 21, 20241 yr by Miss_Sissy
Add a paragraph break.

Theoretically, what you are saying is correct.

 

But this seems like a solution looking for a problem.  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.

 

I 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.

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.

 

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I 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.

 

 

Edited October 22, 20241 yr by Miss_Sissy
line spacing

7 hours ago, Miss_Sissy said:

For me, paying $67 for the ATP NANODURA industrial drive...

 

I assume you were looking at the 4Gb B800Pi SLC model instead of the B600Sc MLC, yes?

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.

 

 

Edited October 22, 20241 yr by Miss_Sissy

8 hours ago, Miss_Sissy said:

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.

 

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?

 

There are a number of ways to corrupt/damage files on a flash drive.  I don't recall seeing many that I would attribute to this.  But I will take this moment to remind everyone they should always have a recent backup of their flash drive, stored somewhere that they can easily access it if their server goes down.  Recreating a new flash drive (either on the original one or a new one) is not that difficult and will get the server back up fairly quickly.

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.

 

 

Edited October 22, 20241 yr by Miss_Sissy
Convert double spaces after sentences to single.

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.

 

USB booting is a great asset, and a $5 drive is all that's needed for years and years of trouble-free use. If in doubt, replace the drives on a schedule - restoring is painless.

I needed a spare USB drive today for some testing and just formatted one of my Unraid drives. Restored when i was done and back into its system.

 

Edited October 23, 20241 yr by Espressomatic

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?

10 hours ago, Miss_Sissy said:

What is your time worth?

 

That's part of my point.  Amazon, click, $5, next morning it's here. Same USB key since 2018 and it's going to last longer than me.

 

No need to overthink this.

 

 

 

Edited October 23, 20241 yr by Espressomatic

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.

 

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Same 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.

 

Edited October 23, 20241 yr by Miss_Sissy
Formatting.

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.

 

What I'm telling you is that my systems don't go down. And if a USB key fails, they still don't go down. And if one did, for whatever reason, AND at the same time there happened to be a USB failure, it's back up almost immediately because I have or can have extra keys on hand. Having spent $60 or $600 on a USB key doesn't change any of that. Something else on the system can die as easily or more so than the USB key - and that, from a hardware perspective is what takes the most time to recover from.

 

But the most time-consuming recovery, even with backups, is software failure. So ya, IMO, you're focusing on the completely wrong potential failure point. It's like worrying about the color of an umbrella rather than whether it'll stop the rain.

 

You make that point numerous times. Did you miss the part where I said I also have 4 systems (not including backups)? My eggs aren't in a single basket. There can never, due to hardware or software failure, be a scenarios where I lose everything you've just described. Home Automation lives on one system. NVR is its own dedicated system . Plex lives on a media serving system. Vault warden lives on my edge router.

 

They're all backed up - recovery is restore time - which does take time. But USB key failure? That's a few minutes maximum for any of the systems.

 

So, again and 1000x over, I'd rather have 12 $5 USB keys than a single $60 key. That's planning for failure and recovery. Not magic beans. If you value uptime, split apart your Unraid system and have at least a few extra USB keys on-hand.

 

 

Edited October 23, 20241 yr by Espressomatic

34 minutes ago, Miss_Sissy said:

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.

+1 this.

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. Don't know really whether it will last longer or not.

But even if it does fail soon, that's a small "N" so will also be anecdotal and won't power anything statistically relevant.

That said, to each their own on hardware choices. Recommendations based on prior success are just that. And useful as such.

But glad people are testing out various options and posting here for the rest of the community to read.

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.  

 

 

 

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."

@Espressomatic, @Miss_Sissy I don't think any of you will convince the other at this point.

You both advanced your arguments for the community, and I am sure that it will help other user decide what's best for them.

 

Let's agree that you disagree and move on.

My 2-year-old SanDisk bit the dust today, in the middle of the Macy's parade....It's always at the perfect time isn't it, and wife not too happy.  Looking through the forum, I'm still baffled that Unraid still doesn't keep an up-to-date list of reliable drives., so what is the latest flavor that is compatible and hopefully won't fail to write 2 years down the road again?

6 minutes ago, jgagnon5541 said:

Looking through the forum, I'm still baffled that Unraid still doesn't keep an up-to-date list of reliable drives., so what is the latest flavor that is compatible and hopefully won't fail to write 2 years down the road again?

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.

1 hour ago, Miss_Sissy said:

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.

Thank you very much for the information!