For love nor money cannot I find a thumb drive for sale anywhere that states it supports/includes a GUID. I have used the Diskpart Utility in Powershell to look up the GUID on a bunch of my existing USB drives - they either come back as '0000000' or have a short string of numbers that do not correspond with the 32-character hexadecimal string that is supposed to make up a GUID.

 

I feel like I must be missing something obvious here, and hate that I am having to ask such a Noob question at literally the first step with UnRaid! But nonetheless I'd appreciate some guidance here. Many thanks

Edited September 25, 20205 yr by nametaken_thisonetoo
Grammar

 

49 minutes ago, nametaken_thisonetoo said:

For love nor money cannot I find a thumb drive for sale anywhere that states it supports/includes a GUID. I have used the Diskpart Utility in Powershell to look up the GUID on a bunch of my existing USB drives - they either come back as '0000000' or have a short string of numbers that do not correspond with the 32-character hexadecimal string that is supposed to make up a GUID.

 

I feel like I must be missing something obvious here, and hate that I am having to ask such a Noob question at literally the first step with UnRaid! But nonetheless I'd appreciate some guidance here. Many thanks

Absolutely best way to see if the flash includes a GUID is to simply set up the flash drive as an Unraid trial and boot with it.  The Registration page will tell you everything you need to know.

 

Beyond that, most drives, especially ones from well known Manufacturers have a unique GUID (ie: Kingston, Sandisk).  Its the crappy ones (or the counterfeit drives from China) that do not.

I'm testing unraid right now and it is working with a Cruser Sandisk USB drive. I suspect similar Sandisks will work well

https://www.amazon.com/PNY-Attache-Flash-Drive-P-FD32GATT03-GE/dp/B003YCOMG4

I use those.

I have used a variety of Sandisk and Kingston flash drives - they all had unique GUIDs.

The new Sandisk Ultra Fit USB 3.1 do not have the GUID, 

 

The earlier Sandisk Ultra Fit USB 3.0 do have GUID, however the 32GB of this won't boot in 3 systems I tried while 16GB are fine, just discontinued.

 

Sandisk Cruzer / Cruser Fit USB 2.0 seem fine as do the Kingston Data traveller USB 2  

 

Also have issues with the Samsung Fit Plus 32GB as in the video. It will only boot using EFI on my supermicro X10 board, and not at all on a HP N40L or an older Gigabyte board. All boards will boot a cruzer 16GB or kingston 16GB without EFI fine.

Edited September 26, 20205 yr by Decto

Great video, many thanks. Based on the content I take it there is no longer any need for these drives to be USB 2.0?

 

I had read in a few places that this was preferred for compatibility and reliability, so was planning on using a USB 2.0 drive mounted to a little Type A adapter sitting atop the USB 2.0 header on my Mobo.

USB2 drives are not a requirement but they are still recommended as they tend work more reliably.  They also seem to be longer-lived which is thought to probably be because they run much cooler - something you want in a drive left plugged in 24x7.   Since Unraid runs from RAM there is no performance advantage over using USB3 except for a few seconds faster boot time as it is loaded into RAM.

On 9/27/2020 at 8:27 AM, itimpi said:

USB2 drives are not a requirement but they are still recommended as they tend work more reliably.  They also seem to be longer-lived which is thought to probably be because they run much cooler - something you want in a drive left plugged in 24x7.   Since Unraid runs from RAM there is no performance advantage over using USB3 except for a few seconds faster boot time as it is loaded into RAM.

When you say USB 2.0 are recommended, do you mean USB 3.0 drives plugged into the USB 2.0 slot or the actual USB 2.0 rated flash drives at retail?

8 minutes ago, mans_ said:

When you say USB 2.0 are recommended, do you mean USB 3.0 drives plugged into the USB 2.0 slot or the actual USB 2.0 rated flash drives at retail?

 

If you can get them then USB 2.0 rated drives although they are now getting harder to source.  Failing that plugging a USB 3 drive into a USB 2 socket seems to be the next best option.

 

Many people use USB 3 drives in USB 3 sockets successfully so there is no hard and fast rule about this.  If you must use USB 3 drives in a USB 3 socket then ones that have metal cases to improve cooling seem to be a good idea.   

 

 

2 hours ago, itimpi said:

 

If you can get them then USB 2.0 rated drives although they are now getting harder to source.  Failing that plugging a USB 3 drive into a USB 2 socket seems to be the next best option.

 

Many people use USB 3 drives in USB 3 sockets successfully so there is no hard and fast rule about this.  If you must use USB 3 drives in a USB 3 socket then ones that have metal cases to improve cooling seem to be a good idea.   

 

 

I can get USB 2.0 rated drives. So is this the best option than getting a USB 3.0 and plugging into USB 2.0?

 

I was under the impression, the newer usb 3.0 had better endurance. Is this notion wrong?

1 hour ago, mans_ said:

I can get USB 2.0 rated drives. So is this the best option than getting a USB 3.0 and plugging into USB 2.0?

My experience is that USB2 drives simpler last longer than USB3 ones.  Since Unraid runs from RAM after initial load the performance of USB3 is not needed.

 

1 hour ago, mans_ said:

I was under the impression, the newer usb 3.0 had better endurance. Is this notion wrong?

 

Certainly getting better but not sure they are as reliable as USB2 ones.   USB3 normally uses much higher chip packing so more susceptible to heat related issues.

 

One of the other issues with USB3 is that BIOS's are still not always as reliable as one would hope in handling USB3 during the boot sequence although they are lot better than they used to be.