July 18, 201213 yr Basically I'd like to use a fairly high speed (for USB 2 standards anyway) 16GB USB stick to store my Plex Media Server data files and whatever else may be suitable. Can I plug in another USB stick, format it, mount it and use it?
July 18, 201213 yr Yes. The go files will require a line to mount the drive. Perhaps SNAP can be used.
July 18, 201213 yr While you can do this, I'd strongly recommend against it, especially for something like a plex library. Plex libraries have a LOT of small files and there are a large amount of read/writes occurring often. You will kill the USB stick (which isn't designed for large amounts of r/w) in no time.
July 19, 201213 yr USB sticks are cheap. You can rsync the contents into the array as a backup. A small SSD will last longer.
July 19, 201213 yr USB sticks are cheap. You can rsync the contents into the array as a backup. A small SSD will last longer. The issue with an SSD is the lack of TRIM support in unraid.
July 19, 201213 yr USB sticks are cheap. You can rsync the contents into the array as a backup. A small SSD will last longer. Or, get an old hard-disk of nearly any size, put it in a USB case, and use it instead of an SSD plugged into an USB port.
July 19, 201213 yr USB sticks are cheap. You can rsync the contents into the array as a backup. A small SSD will last longer. The issue with an SSD is the lack of TRIM support in unraid. The lack of TRIM support is not an issue in unRAID. TRIM improves write performance. Write performance in unRAID is limited by Ethernet and any SSD, even without TRIM, will outperform Ethernet. Additionally, many new SSDs perform garbage collection and do not require TRIM for good write performance in most usage cases; after 30 min. of idle time the SSDs write performance is as good as new.
July 19, 201213 yr Author Number of reasons I'd like to use a USB stick. 1. 16GB USB stick holding ~8GB data will last a LONG time. 2. I would need to use an additional SATA card to use an SSD. 3. Power usage, USB sticks are negligible, even the best SSD is 1W and 2.5" HD is 2W. 4. Cheap! £20 for a decent speed USB3 (compatible with USB2) stick. 5. Plex might have lots of small files, but once my database is built then writes are minimal. Reason for this is my cache drive is currently a power hungry 1TB 7200RPM 3.5" drive, which if I move SSDs around I might have a free 2.5" 5400RPM disk for cache instead, which could spin 24/7.
July 19, 201213 yr Author Yea, but decent ones with speeds that can actually hit USB2 limits arnt cheap. I might even upgrade my boot stick.
July 20, 201213 yr USB sticks are cheap. You can rsync the contents into the array as a backup. A small SSD will last longer. The issue with an SSD is the lack of TRIM support in unraid. The lack of TRIM support is not an issue in unRAID. TRIM improves write performance. Write performance in unRAID is limited by Ethernet and any SSD, even without TRIM, will outperform Ethernet. Additionally, many new SSDs perform garbage collection and do not require TRIM for good write performance in most usage cases; after 30 min. of idle time the SSDs write performance is as good as new. That isn't true. The only drives on the market right now that will bring performance back up with background garbage collection are ones with that latest Marvell controller in them and they are very pricey. Take a look at the tests done here in this review. The drives without the Marvell controller slow to a crawl without TRIM. The garbage collection is basically worthless on most of those drives. Even the best of the drives without the Marvell controller are well below full Gigabit Ethernet speeds. http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/storage/display/patriot-pyro-se_4.html
July 20, 201213 yr USB sticks are cheap. You can rsync the contents into the array as a backup. A small SSD will last longer. The issue with an SSD is the lack of TRIM support in unraid. The lack of TRIM support is not an issue in unRAID. TRIM improves write performance. Write performance in unRAID is limited by Ethernet and any SSD, even without TRIM, will outperform Ethernet. Additionally, many new SSDs perform garbage collection and do not require TRIM for good write performance in most usage cases; after 30 min. of idle time the SSDs write performance is as good as new. That isn't true. The only drives on the market right now that will bring performance back up with background garbage collection are ones with that latest Marvell controller in them and they are very pricey. Take a look at the tests done here in this review. The drives without the Marvell controller slow to a crawl without TRIM. The garbage collection is basically worthless on most of those drives. Even the best of the drives without the Marvell controller are well below full Gigabit Ethernet speeds. http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/storage/display/patriot-pyro-se_4.html It is true. Those tests do not represent typical usage patterns. The test is designed to exacerbate the worst case performance. This page represents typical performance. http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/storage/display/patriot-pyro-se_6.html This information is applicable to making a purchase decision. TRIM is not required. Additional non-TRIM results: http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/51455-intel-520-240gb-ssd-raid-0-performance-review-10.html
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