This is a community heads-up for anyone running Unraid on USB boot or planning to.

The market reality

Kioxia (formerly Toshiba) issued a formal End-of-Life notice in March 2026 covering all TSOP MLC NAND production.

Final orders accepted until September 15, 2026.

Final shipments by March 15, 2027.

Samsung completed final MLC shipments in June 2026.

The last major MLC producers are done.

What this means practically -- genuine industrial MLC USB drives are entering permanent scarcity.

The authorized distributor price for the Innodisk 3ME (DEUA1-64GI61BW1SC) currently sits at $120 at specialist distributors and $1,252 at DigiKey for the same drive.

That price trajectory reflects what the industrial procurement market already knows about what's coming.

The opportunity

There is currently a surplus liquidation listing on eBay for this exact drive -- 64GB Innodisk 3ME industrial MLC, purpose-built for always-on embedded applications, confirmed Toshiba MLC NAND via Flash ID decode on purchased units.

The drives originated from a LYTX commercial fleet dashcam application -- hardware specified for always-on embedded duty far more demanding than a NAS boot device will ever impose.

🚨🚨 Approximately 600 units remain. eBay item 326046070546 🚨🚨

Current price: $3.99

Full specifications: https://www.innodisk.com/en/products/flash-storage/others-usb-usb-edc/usb-drive-3me

The listing's order history shows multiple bulk purchases up to 200 units at once.

600 sounds like plenty until a single corporate buyer wipes out a significant portion overnight.

The single digit countdown can happen faster than any forum alert can respond to.

For context on why this specific drive matters for Unraid boot duty -- 3,000 P/E cycles, 60-bit ECC, metal housing, 30μ gold contacts, industrial BOM, custom industrial firmware, S.M.A.R.T. capable*

Why this matters now specifically

After Kioxia's March 2027 final shipment deadline new production of this NAND category ends permanently.

The $3.99 price reflects surplus liquidation pricing set before the MLC EOL announcements created market awareness of the scarcity.

For full technical context see: https://forums.unraid.net/topic/196967-unraid-boot-device-guide-usb-and-internal-boot-hardware-selection-and-risk-tradeoffs/

*Drive health monitoring available via Innodisk’s proprietary iTracker utility --

vendor-specific S.M.A.R.T. like metrics such as health percentage and erase count; not standard ATA S.M.A.R.T.

Tool available from Innodisk support on request.

This post has no commercial relationship with the seller.

No affiliate links. No financial interest in purchases.

Just a community heads-up on a closing window that most people won't notice until it's gone.

Edited Tuesday at 10:11 AM3 days by Lolight

I tried finding itracker on the innodisk website but couldn't locate any download link. Is it publicly available somewhere or does it require contacting them directly?

2 hours ago, Carraya said:

I tried finding itracker on the innodisk website but couldn't locate any download link. Is it publicly available somewhere or does it require contacting them directly?

Unfortunately iTracker isn't available as a public download -- you're correct that the product page exists but provides no download link.

The only way to obtain it is by contacting Innodisk's web request team directly through their website contact form.

In my experience they responded in 3 days.

Be prepared to provide some information about yourself -- they asked for a company name and its address before sending the file.

If providing that information isn't something you're comfortable with, feel free to send me a PM -- I'm happy to share my copy of iTracker with any forum member who needs it.

The iTracker output on purchased units from the listing confirms 99.93% health and average erase count of 2 across all 8 tested drives -- factory new condition on every unit tested. A count of 2 is factory quality control testing and firmware initialization.

Edited July 1Jul 1 by Lolight