RFQ: USB Flash Creator Rework


jonp

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I agree that a warning at 4GB seem a bit low.   However going larger than 8GB or 16GB is a waste of money as it is very unlikely you would ever use all that space.  I would suggest that the warning at 8GB might be more appropriate as  4GB drives seem to be rare nowadays.

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FWIW, you can still easily purchase 4 gb sticks, and I don't think the warning as written is an incentive to go out and buy smaller, but does a reasonably good job of explaining that there's no benefit to bigger.

 

It's just that sometimes people will go all-out and buy "the best" and might stick a 64 or 128 gb in there, and that's totally pointless.

 

In any case, I will let the actual unraid developers choose whatever value they want here. It's just a number to edit in the code.

 

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16 minutes ago, Dr. Justice said:

FWIW, you can still easily purchase 4 gb sticks, and I don't think the warning as written is an incentive to go out and buy smaller, but does a reasonably good job of explaining that there's no benefit to bigger.

 

It's just that sometimes people will go all-out and buy "the best" and might stick a 64 or 128 gb in there, and that's totally pointless.

 

In any case, I will let the actual unraid developers choose whatever value they want here. It's just a number to edit in the code.

 

This largely depends on your location. Most stores in my area that aren't technology-centric start at 16gb as the smallest size now. I also use my thumb drive to store a persistent home folder image, and some other stuff. Even with that though, I've only used 9.7gb/128gb. And I'm only using a 128GB drive for two reasons:

  • It's faster than smaller drives
  • It was free
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On 7/21/2020 at 3:47 PM, Dr. Justice said:

- If the key is larger than 4gb, a warning will appear saying the key is needlessly large for no added benefit  (you can still write to it).

No benefit? The drive will last longer due to wear levelling.

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On 7/26/2020 at 12:17 AM, mihu said:

No benefit? The drive will last longer due to wear levelling.

FYI: A consumer USB-Stick has normaly "no" wear leveling...

...and certainly not in the size of 4-8GB

If you want wear leveling, you need to use an "industrial grade" USB flash-drive

Edited by Zonediver
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13 hours ago, Zonediver said:

FYI: A consumer USB-Stick has normaly "no" wear leveling...

...and certainly not in the size of 4-8GB

If you want wear leveling, you need to use an "industrial grade" USB flash-drive

You could also create backup folders on the usb flash device and 'mv' files there, then new files will write to new blocks; though eventually the flash will fill up.

 

For example, say you're going to update the OS.  Already the update process will 'mv' (move) current bz* files to 'prev' folder, deleting those files and making their blocks available for re-use.  You could first rename 'prev' to say 'prev-20200727'.  Now Update OS will create a new 'prev' folder and 'mv' bz* files there - noting that 'mv' does not actually move it just changes a few pointers to place those files in the target directory.  This way over time you end up writing further and further into the device.  You could do similar thing with 'config' directory.

 

But in normal use the usb flash is barely being used.  We have usb flash devices used in test servers that have been hammered for several years now and still work fine.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 8 months later...
On 4/25/2021 at 7:22 AM, Devar said:

None of my hardware even has a USB2.0 port anymore!

 

...almost every MB has USB 2.0-headers on board - you need a USB-Cable with a 10pin-header.

Even the newest ASRock B560 Pro4 has two internal USB 2.0 connections (one header).

 

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Edited by Zonediver
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22 minutes ago, Zonediver said:

 

...almost every MB has USB 2.0-headers on board - you need a USB-Cable with a 10pin-header.

Even the newest ASRock B560 Pro4 has two internal USB 2.0 connections (one header).

 

grafik.png.752131d5ddd1732ad42cb1d46f1d2a63.pnggrafik.png.efadae189c50b8f6ae4328534f223131.png

Personally I wanted to switch from VMWare to Unraid. My host hardware does have usb2.0. But it seemed much more intuitive to connect a USB flash drive to my laptop and create the unraid usb from there. My laptop does not have usb2.0 ports at all. I only have usb3.0 ports.

This isn't the issue though. The usb creator can see usb2.0 flash drives plugged into my usb3.0 ports. The issue is the usb creator cannot see usb3.1 flash drives and certain usb3.0 flash drives. The usb version (2.x/3.x) shouldn't matter to the usb creator. As long as your host's motherboard will boot from it you should be able to create an unraid usb from any flash drive with the required ID (I think it's a GUID).

 

I was able to manually create the unraid usb by downloading the zip file, unzipping it to the flash drive, naming the parition UNRAID, and running the make_bootable.bat. My host boots from it just fine. I registered and bought pro from within the unraid web ui, and it recognized the device ID without issue.

 

The issue is just with the usb creator not even being able to see certain USB flash drives. 

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1 hour ago, iXNyNe said:

The issue is just with the usb creator not even being able to see certain USB flash drives. 

 

That's the reason, why i use the "by hand" method 😉

And for creating the unraid-stick, i also use a USB 3.0 port on my PC.

On unraid its recommended to use a 2.0 port - not on the "creating PC".

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