I woke up this morning and found my Unraid fails to boot - same story that happens to many people many times, no thanks to Unraid continuous refusal to allow SSD boot... but I digressed.

 

Here's what's different:

I mounted the USB stick on another computer and found that it is still mountable but the entire drive is empty, except for a single 0-size file called "RRaA". Usually when a stick is corrupted, it's unmountable on another PC. What's even more weird is the used size reported by Windows is actually as if all the files are still there.

 

For what it's worth, my stick is plugged into a USB 2.0 port and has been working since 2016 so I'm kinda overdue for a corruption. It's just that the corruption is so strange that I just want to report back in case anyone has seen something similar?

 

5 hours ago, testdasi said:

I woke up this morning and found my Unraid fails to boot - same story that happens to many people many times, no thanks to Unraid continuous refusal to allow SSD boot... but I digressed.

 

IMO, if you're corrupting your boot disk on a regular basis, unless you have a bad USB controller, it doesn't matter if you're using USB drive or SSD. Likely you have bad memory and you'd corrupt any/all boot devices regardless of what bus they're connected to.

 

For every person with a USB-based issue there are likely a thousand without such issues. My four Unraid systems have no issues with USB and no issues with USB keys, no matter the price, no matter the BUS (2/3). It's SOLID. Same USB drive since 2018 here, another from 2020 and a couple from earlier this year, tiny little Sandisk cheap ones.

 

But catastrophes can happen and that's another reason Unraid works so well. A restore from backup takes a minute to a new USB drive and then booting brings everything back online - a new license is automatically installed after confirming an on-screen prompt at startup.

 

 

Edited December 18, 20241 yr by Espressomatic

2 hours ago, Espressomatic said:

 

IMO, if you're corrupting your boot disk on a regular basis, unless you have a bad USB controller, it doesn't matter if you're using USB drive or SSD. Likely you have bad memory and you'd corrupt any/all boot devices regardless of what bus they're connected to.

 

For every person with a USB-based issue there are likely a thousand without such issues. My four Unraid systems have no issues with USB and no issues with USB keys, no matter the price, no matter the BUS (2/3). It's SOLID. Same USB drive since 2018 here, another from 2020 and a couple from earlier this year, tiny little Sandisk cheap ones.

 

But catastrophes can happen and that's another reason Unraid works so well. A restore from backup takes a minute to a new USB drive and then booting brings everything back online - a new license is automatically installed after confirming an on-screen prompt at startup.

 

 

 

This is what annoys me so much that I self-exiled myself from the Unraid forum. These excuses make no sense and yet kept re-inforcing the group-think.

• Catastrophes can happen. No doubt. It's the probability of such catastrophe. The rate of failure for SSD is order of magnitude lower than a USB stick. In fact, I have purposely tried to kill an SSD to the extent that the TBW SMART counter has corrupted and it still runs fine. I am actively trying to run a a QLC SSD to the ground and it is still holding up. My USB stick has barely had any write and it failed.
• Self-selection means the people who reply with "I have had no problem" automatically excludes those who have abandoned Unraid after having major issues.
• My stick has had no issue since 2016, 2 years older than yours! Expect something to happen in the next 2 years?

Restoring is not the problem. The problem is that the cause could have been easily be avoided.

 

I'm signing out.

Yes, it's the fault of Unraid for your hardware issues. I typically don't reply to pity-party emails  -but yeah, it's your party, cry if you want to. Just don't blame Unraid for your apparent apathy to anything not catering to your self-imposed misery.

 

 unRAID 6.9.0-beta25 

 

I really hope that's some kind of inside joke or a signature you just haven't touched for over 3 years.

Edited December 19, 20241 yr by Espressomatic