First time Unraid user here.  I'd rather not run Unraid from a USB drive.  I bought an NVME specifically for it to run on (with 12 "regular" HDs for storage).  Is there a way to install Unraid onto an nvme drive and have it run from there?

Unraid does not run from a USB drive. The USB drive contains the archive of the OS. The archive is unpacked fresh at each boot into RAM, and the OS runs completely in RAM. Think of it as firmware except easy to upgrade with no risk of bricking.

 

In addition to the OS archives, the USB drive stores configuration settings so they can be reapplied at boot, but the USB drive isn't really used much and doesn't require speed or much capacity.

 

There is no other way to install Unraid. The GUID of the USB drive is required for licensing.

That being said, that NVMe makes a great Cache drive. That’s what I use mine for. 😀 

2 minutes ago, falconexe said:

That being said, that NVMe makes a great Cache drive. That’s what I use mine for. 😀 

I am running latest beta, so I have 2x500GB SSD as cache pool, and 256GB NVMe as "fast" pool.

2 hours ago, trurl said:

I am running latest beta, so I have 2x500GB SSD as cache pool, and 256GB NVMe as "fast" pool.

Sweet. I’ll be getting into multiple pools once stable is released. Glad to hear the beta is going well!

I'm a new unraid user myself. Think of unraid as one of those linux distrobutions that you can boot off of a flash drive. Everything works off of ram once the machine is booted. You can even back up the contents of your flash drive if you click main in the menu system and select flash to your local computer. I recent passed 100 days of uptime. The software is solid as a rock. Any drives you add are "Storage" Either fast Cache SSD (or if you want HDD) or Array (which can be HDD or SDD) It's so flexible its silly. Unraid is honestly the best software value i've main in 10 years.

7 hours ago, Ericjr said:

or Array (which can be HDD or SDD)

Note that SSDs in the parity array cannot be trimmed, and can only be written at parity speed.