I am stuck on a few MINOR questions right at the beginning! I did in fact boot from Flash drive and was at the phase where you type in \\tower. I hadn't connected anything so couldn't find any IP addresses for the next step. I wasn't 100% sure on some questions below.

 

List of stupid questions:

1) A lot of mention of how important it is to get a "recommended" thumb drive. The way it is talked about makes me think that if the thumb drive dies for some reason you are completely hosed and have to start from scratch? Yes or No?

 

2) From inferring (probably incorrectly) about how important the thumb drive is, does the Unraid Operating system reside solely on the thumb drive? Yes or No?

 

3) Which leads into...is the thumb drive required to be plugged in/attached to your USB port on your server 24/7? Yes or No?

 

4) Since i am not sure about this from the above questions can you install the Unraid OS on a hard drive? Yes or No?

 

5) If you can in fact install Unraid OS on a hard drive it probably SHOULDN'T be on one of your data drives? Yes or No?

 

6) And lastly if Unraid can be installed on a hard drive (not sure still) is it advisable to have a small SSD for just the Unraid OS? Yes or No?....and what size. (i.e. X amount of GB + a little extra for good measure)

I am stuck on a few MINOR questions right at the beginning! I did in fact boot from Flash drive and was at the phase where you type in \\tower. I hadn't connected anything so couldn't find any IP addresses for the next step. I wasn't 100% sure on some questions below.

 

List of stupid questions:

1) A lot of mention of how important it is to get a "recommended" thumb drive. The way it is talked about makes me think that if the thumb drive dies for some reason you are completely hosed and have to start from scratch? Yes or No?

 

** No.  The data is always there.  A new installation will "see" the data -- as long as you "assign" the drives back into the array again -- the key being the PARITY drive being re-assigned properly.  Parity choice is key, the rest of the drives can be assigned in any sequence -- just gotta be "all" of them as data drives, correctly.  This is why most people keep a "print screen" of their drive configurations -- it shows serial numbers, etc -- so things can go back the way it was. 

 

2) From inferring (probably incorrectly) about how important the thumb drive is, does the Unraid Operating system reside solely on the thumb drive? Yes or No?

 

** Yes, it does reside on the thumb drive.  The hard drives are used for data only.

 

3) Which leads into...is the thumb drive required to be plugged in/attached to your USB port on your server 24/7? Yes or No?

 

** Yes, you leave it installed 24/7.  It's not really "hit" that much after booting, but it does get hit from time to time.

 

4) Since i am not sure about this from the above questions can you install the Unraid OS on a hard drive? Yes or No?

** No.  Well, more accurately why bother.  There are some posts I've read about how to install the OS to a drive {not in your array} and still reference the thumb drive for it's key {assuming you are not running the free version}

 

5) If you can in fact install Unraid OS on a hard drive it probably SHOULDN'T be on one of your data drives? Yes or No?

 

** It can't be.  Well, again, I'm sure there's some magic way of creating multiple partitions, and hacking things.  But it's the wrong direction for simplicity.

 

6) And lastly if Unraid can be installed on a hard drive (not sure still) is it advisable to have a small SSD for just the Unraid OS? Yes or No?....and what size. (i.e. X amount of GB + a little extra for good measure)

 

** I think you're missing the point, or have a concern that is invalid.  Thousands of Unraid instances are up and running using a thumb drive -- exactly the way it was MEANT to be.  Many have bought a little "header" that plugs onto the motherboard USB Pins to "present" a female USB connector inside the case -- your USB thumb drive can go in that header, and it's hands off.

some also use a SD Card reader...like the Kingston MobileliteG2

 

Note: The card reader must have a unique GUID.

I think one major point was missed in answering the questions.

unRAID reads the flash the flash drive on boot and loads into RAM. Unraid then runs from ram only writing to the flash drive once in while for minor things like configuration file changes and log files. it does not run from a drive like a traditional OS unlike one from microsoft for example that runs from the drive.

 

on every reboot unraid basicly "reinstalls itself" into ram. that is one reason unraid looses all settings if they are not in a configuration file or the go script (this is actually a good theng).

 

bottom line, there is very wear and tear on whatever drive it is installed on. it is recemended to buy a quality one for the fact that generic flash drives well... crap out after a bit. i cant count them buer of free flash drives from conventions or store promo's that have just died in a month or so. on the other side of the coin i have had HP, Lexar and sandisk drives running as boot drives or cache or 24/7 storage drives in various OS's for years and they are all still 100% fine.

 

PS if your drive does fail, you can usually get the key replaced in about 4-24 hours from limetech once you have a new drive.. Tom is pretty good about that.