1 hour ago, zulu153 said:

Could someone add to the FAQ on the pool boot a list of the benefits of moving to this method. A do understand that it provides the "new and shiny" trinket experience to some of us; but what else? It still seems to me as a solution (as explained by SI1) in search of a problem. I would just like to know what problem(s) the developers felt that this solutions would solve, since I am a newby to unraid and could have problems I don't even know about - I certainly so no problems with my booting experience.

The reason for internal boot is many user have requested an option to boot from a non usb flash drive due to the potential of them failing. Myself I ran the same usb since I purchased in 2017 only changed because it was too small.

The internal boot pool does support redundant drives so will still run if one of them fails an you can just swap in a new one.

1 hour ago, SimonF said:

The internal boot pool does support redundant drives so will still run if one of them fails an you can just swap in a new one.

The vast majority will end up with a single cheap QLC NVMe. Don't those fail?

And how easy is the recovery process compared to a failed USB boot drive?

btw, the mirrored USB drive pool is also an option if desired.

Edited April 20Apr 20 by Lolight

3 hours ago, zulu153 said:

Could someone add to the FAQ on the pool boot a list of the benefits of moving to this method.

Internal boot has more drawbacks than benefits

https://forums.unraid.net/topic/196967-unraid-boot-device-guide-usb-and-nvme-hardware-selection/#comment-1606140

52 minutes ago, Lolight said:

The vast majority will end up with a single cheap QLC NVMe. Don't those fail?

And how easy is the recovery process compared to the failed USB boot drive?

Yes all devices can fail.

If it is a mirrored pool it is a standard disk replacemnet.

Single woud have more steps that a flash.

I run Unraid as a VM on a ProxMox server (I have one “NAS Server” that I run both Unraid and TrueNAS on… Unraid for the array functionality for bulk/media storage and TrueNAS for a couple TB of data on SSDs like my ‘home drive’). SATA controller is passed thru to Unraid for the spinning rust, along with 2 NVME for ZFS RAID 1 cache (PCIe pass thru).

I understand I’ll have to continue to pass thru the USB for licensing purposes. But I’d like to switch to internal boot because

I’d add a virtual disk via proxmox for the internal boot drive. Which will be coming from a pair of mirrored NVME the ProxMox host has for its boot/VM storage.

1) Will that add the benefits of faster boot times, and easier backups (virtual boot disk will get backed up via ProxMox Backup Server daily)?

2) What is the ideal internal boot disk size, 8 GB? 16 GB?

11 hours ago, thorium said:

1) Will that add the benefits of faster boot times, and easier backups (virtual boot disk will get backed up via ProxMox Backup Server daily)?

It's unlikely that you will notice faster boot times, there' s not much difference even when using an NVMe device, for example. As for the backups, can't comment since I'm not familiar with how Proxmox does that.

11 hours ago, thorium said:

2) What is the ideal internal boot disk size, 8 GB? 16 GB?

8GB should be enough, unless you store any other things on /boot

On 4/20/2026 at 9:59 AM, Lolight said:

Internal boot has more drawbacks than benefits

https://forums.unraid.net/topic/196967-unraid-boot-device-guide-usb-and-nvme-hardware-selection/#comment-1606140

I couldn't agree more

On 4/21/2026 at 1:41 AM, JorgeB said:

It's unlikely that you will notice faster boot times, there' s not much difference even when using an NVMe device, for example. As for the backups, can't comment since I'm not familiar with how Proxmox does that.

8GB should be enough, unless you store any other things on /boot

If you have Proxmox VE, your backups are managed via a separate machine with PBS. Absolutely Amazing.

There's a greater chance of growing a third leg out of my forehead than any USB thumb drive failing on use with Unraid. Haha.

I posted that I didn't see a reason to boot from NVME or anything other than USB, but I remembered one (and only one). Every motherboard I've ever used has occasional issues booting from USB - doesn't matter if it was old BIOS or newer UEFI. It's happened on all systems here and there. On one ASROCK system if the machine has been down for a while, I have to move the USB drive to a different port for the board to see it - it doesn't matter the USB drive used. Restarting doesn't have that issue ever.