Had a CMOS battery fail which crashed the whole server.

Replaced battery and got server back up, it did the partity rebuild 26 hours and done.

The next morning the USB boot drive fails. Replaced it and back up and running but now It once again needs to do the whole unclean shutdown and parity rebuild again. I know USB's boot is soon to be replaced and hopefully this will resolve a good amount of these types of issues but arghhhhhh. This puts more wear and tear on the drives and stressing me out waiting for it to finish again - Worried if a storm or power fail and UPS runs out of juice, another unclean shutdown.

I was in a VM and the whole remote desktop closed and the server main showed this: (2 screens to fit it in) But it was not shutting down and kind of stuck which is what was the problem.

Please post the diagnostics.

Hey Jorge!

tower-diagnostics-20260501-0854.zipI was just venting, i didn't need assistance itself but here is the file. What a week! When I first had problems, i thought it was LSI controller and went and changed that out, in the process of that, the data connector on the 14tb drive literally broke off which further complicated everything because I had to replace the drive (but i have spares thank god) lol. To get my new USB workling, i created a new 7.2.3 boot and copied my /config from the old usb over (i was able to read it without issue)

13 hours ago, GeorgeJetson20 said:

I was just venting, i didn't need assistance

Sorry, I misread the post.

13 hours ago, GeorgeJetson20 said:

To get my new USB workling

Glad you got it sorted -- what a week indeed.

One suggestion: avoid replacing the Cruzer Fit with another Cruzer Fit.

The flush form factor traps heat, which is hard on NAND over time.

A standard full-size USB drive with MLC NAND will serve you much better.

On internal boot -- it will solve the cheap USB drive problem but introduces new ones.

Routine BIOS updates with Secure Boot key changes can brick internal boot entirely.

Worth understanding before making the switch.

I had purchased a pack of 10, that is why i replaced with the same. As for internal boot, just don't update the bios often, i guess. But i would imagine, it will still prevent this type of issue.

The pack of 10 makes total sense as a decision at the time.

But consider what just happened -- a single boot drive failure cascaded into two parity rebuilds and a week of stress across a carefully built system.

With 8 Cruzer Fits left, that's 8 more opportunities for the same cascade.

A single quality MLC drive will likely outlast all 10 of them and the 10-pack cost is already spent either way.

On the BIOS point -- skipping updates is harder to maintain than it sounds, especially on AMD platforms where AGESA updates carry real stability and security fixes.

"Don't update often" tends to quietly become "haven't updated in 3 years".

I agree with you.. I took a look on Amazon and not sure which to get because it does not really say MLC. I searched: mlc usb flash drive 16g - I'm in the US. If you can point me to one I should get or a few.. also, am I going to have a problem if I switch again to another USB drive with Unraid? Can you switch again without needing any assistance from support?

Edited May 3May 3 by GeorgeJetson20

Now i ran into a new problem that I somehow created.. I added a Realtek 8156 USB, all of unraid works but when I try to start the VM - it looses the network connection to the server and I can go to console and do a reboot and get back up. Not sure what is causing this. Here is my diagnostics. All i did after adding the network usb 2.5g - changed the interface rule to the mac of the usb for eth0

Not sure how to resolve this because not really sure where the issue.Uploading Attachment...

Actually, I also earlier today on the VM, but did not reboot or restart since. I loaded Virtio-guest-tools.exe

I bet this is the issue, but how do i remove that now??

Edited May 3May 3 by GeorgeJetson20

Not sure I should repost my problem in a new message. I am stuck now with this VM issue - I can't proceed

2 hours ago, GeorgeJetson20 said:

I agree with you.. I took a look on Amazon and not sure which to get because it does not really say MLC.

For the USB drive question, Amazon is not the right place to shop for this -- MLC is rarely disclosed in listings and what is disclosed can't always be trusted. Have a look at this thread instead:

https://forums.unraid.net/topic/196990-mlc-consumer-and-industrial-usb-flash-drives/

It covers several consumer ebay drives, including an Innodisk industrial drive currently available on eBay for around $4

eBay item number: 326046070546

Check this guide for in-depth info if you have time:

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

For the VM/network issue -- that deserves its own thread where it can get proper attention from people familiar with Virtio and USB NIC passthrough.

2 hours ago, GeorgeJetson20 said:

also, am I going to have a problem if I switch again to another USB drive with Unraid? Can you switch again without needing any assistance from support?

If you've already used one recently for the Cruzer Fit replacement, the next switch may require a support contact.

I did post a separate one for the VM.. it's 100% from the Guest Agent, and nothing to do with the networking but I need to get into the VM by Monday so I hope someone is able to help with that because everything i tried has failed and not sure why it crashes the server when the VM fails...I have a backup from March but I don't want to lose 1 month of data so i am in a slight but controlled panic.

@GeorgeJetson20 Do you pass any hardware through to your VMs? Could not get the diagnostics to download to have a look. If so adding the new NIC may have changed the IDs. I would suggest deleting config/vfio.cfg fom the flash drive, rebooting, and then redoing the hardware passthroughs.

I looked at config folder and did not see any vfio.cfg there at all -

It's resolved. The issue was I had a VM with the checkbox to use the network, once I removed the checkbox, whammo - it booted.. had nothing to do with guest-tools!