Hello,

Don’t you think it’s time for Unraid to stop requiring a USB stick as the boot device?

I’m already on my third USB stick in just three months, and I’ve barely made any changes to Unraid…

I understand that the OS runs in RAM, and I’ve tried USB drives recommended on the forums, using both USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 ports.

But the USB always ends up dying. I believe that more than 50% of the people who stop using Unraid do so partly because of this USB boot requirement. Despite my research, there is no official or even community-supported method to bypass this.

What do you think? It would be great if users could choose whether to boot from USB or SSD.

Have a nice day

Been announced as a work in progress already.

Is good news !

Edited June 11, 20251 yr by Pradotec

3 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

Been announced as a work in progress already.

Where we can follow the progress ?

Nowhere, it comes when it comes.

52 minutes ago, Pradotec said:

I’m already on my third USB stick in just three months, and I’ve barely made any changes to Unraid…

This is hard to believe. There are folks here using USB boot Flash drives that they have used for years.

Have a look at the number of reads and write on your Flash device on the MAIN tab.

I have two servers.

The first server has 13,606 reads and 805 writes in 20 days of operation.

The other server has 11,077 reads and 1799 writes in 30 Days of operation.

Understand that writes will shorten the life of USB Flash Drives as will high temperatures. That is why the recommendation is for USB2 drives that are physically large. (USB2 speeds require less power and a large physical size helps dissipate heats better.

On 6/11/2025 at 2:21 PM, Pradotec said:

Despite my research, there is no official or even community-supported method to bypass this.

There WERE articles that have described how to overcome this, but they have been removed for now because it is violating the copy protection scheme.

You still may find infos for this on reddit.