Is it possible to install the following on the USB drive where unRAID sits:

 

-sabNXBD

-Sickbeard

-YAMJ

-Eversion skin to be used with YAMJ

 

AND have it all run from the USB drive without having to spin up any disks with the only exception being YAMJ (I assume this has to reside on the unRAID server for the PCH's to see it).  Basically, I think it can all be installed to the USB drive, but I'm just not sure how it all my operate in regards to spinning up the disks.

Is it possible to install the following on the USB drive where unRAID sits:

 

-sabNXBD

-Sickbeard

I suggest NOT installing these to the flash drive.  Never point the log files for the above to the flash drive, that is asking for a dead flash drive very quickly. Plus there may be permissions issues if running stuff from the flash drive... but not sure.

 

I don't have any experience with the other stuff so will let someone else comment there.

I believe you, but I'm wondering why?  I am incredibly ignorant, but I would have thought the USB drive would have far less of a chance of failing since it is more or less solid state electronics as opposed to something like a cache drive or any hard drive for that matter.

I believe you, but I'm wondering why?  I am incredibly ignorant, but I would have thought the USB drive would have far less of a chance of failing since it is more or less solid state electronics as opposed to something like a cache drive or any hard drive for that matter.

USB drives are no where near the class of SSD type drives.  You can only read and write to a USB drive so many times before the drive will die.  HDD do not suffer from the safe effect, though they can have mechanical failures since they have moving parts.

USB key drives.. Actually FLASH memory drives, have a limited amount of writes.

It's on the order of 100,000 or so, but USB FLASH Key's do not have the advanced algorithms that SSD Flash drives have.

 

So far I've worn out 2 of my /boot flash key drives just from putting .tgz's and editing files there.

Each was about 2GB.

I would surmise the larger the flash key the longer life you will have as cells go bad, there are plenty left over.

 

 

Some ideas of what you can do...

 

Create installable slackware packages and install them to a tmpfs somewhere.

The tmpfs will reside in RAM.

 

Now since ram is a premium, you can install more. I have 8GB. or you can install a quality flash key and put swap on it.

The only reason to put swap on it is so that your tmpfs can be swapped out to the flash key if your system needs the ram.

 

There's all kinds of tricks that can be done, just know that a tmpfs (not the initramfs/rootfs that unraid has) can be swapped out.

 

Another option is to use something like the Gigabyte iRAM PCI card.

This would give you a 4GB ramdisk that you can use to your hearts content and it will function just like an SATA drive.

 

You can also use it as swap if you wanted to.

 

It's too bad we don't have something like AFS or unionfs like knoppix or other CD distro's use that would come in handy.

 

However you weigh it, If you can package up the install and put it in RAM, you can just add ram to your motherboards max if needed.

 

Get a SSD or a laptop HDD and use that outside of the unRAID array if you are worried about spinning-up drives. Either will use little power and won't wear out the flash.

 

Peter