I know this has been asked, but it seems the official list only list 3 types, and they are a bit aging.  I can pick this one up today at a local store.  Does anyone know if this will work properly.

 

San Disk SDCZ43-032G-A46

 

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/sandisk-ultra-fit-32gb-usb-3-0-flash-drive-black-silver/9089012.p?skuId=9089012

 

Thanks

 

Almost any well recognized brand name flash drive will work.  The one to avoid are the ones with no-name, handout drives that you got at street fair (or any similar event) and ones with completely unknown names.  HOWEVER, you do NOT want a USB3 drive!  There have been several folks who have had problems with USB3 drives.  Most of the time, the definitive cause has never been identified.  Get a USB2 drive and possibly avoid a headache. (Plus, you will probably save a couple of bucks.) 

 

There is no real advantage to the higher speed of a USB3 flash drive as the unRAID boot drive.  It basically just sits --unaccessed-- after the boot process has finished until the server is rebooted (or shutdown).  Then it writes a single file back to the flash drive that sets a flag that the array was successfully stopped before powerdown.  

20 hours ago, Frank1940 said:

HOWEVER, you do NOT want a USB3 drive!

 

That said, we never have any problems with USB3 devices.  We mainly use SanDisk Ultra Fit's but tried a couple others with success.  You don't need a large amount of storage and they're cheap enough, just get a couple different ones.

4 hours ago, limetech said:

That said, we never have any problems with USB3 devices. 

 

This is probably true for 98+% of the folks who have tried and are using USB3 flash drives.  But there have been a few cases where the drive gets 'lost' during the boot process and never ends up mounted when the boot process finishes.   I suspect it is an interaction between the hardware (both MB and drive), the Bootloader, the BIOS and the Linux Kernel.  It does not occur often but it is aggravating when it does.