Migration to OpenMediaVault

Hello
I am currently in the process of getting my Freenas ZFS Pool to OMV and I have a couple of questions:
-I am trying to install the OS onto a USB-drive

  1. It tells me it is too small, but I have a hard time believing it requires more than 30GB of space (I will try an other USB Drive tonight, because I had a lot of issues with the SANDISK USB drives I am currently trying.)
  2. I read that OMV shouldn’t be on a USB device because it will write it to death within weeks: is that still true?
    if so: do you recommand an SSD or a HDD as an OS drive?
    thank you for the support

kind regards
shadow

32GB is more than enough. The problem must be somewhere else. Browse their forum because it seems to me that such a case was already there.

I don’t see a problem with USB. Just install folder2ram … I personally use OMV on the sd card and I have no problems.

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It is, sort of. Last I checked, there is an extension that majorly reduces writes to the boot drive, which means the USB flash drive should last a lot longer.

SSD, booting and other disk intensive operations will go much quicker. Also, OMV does not need a big boot drive, so a small( and cheap) SDD is fine.

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Thank you, I shall see for an SSD then.
Sayonara!

While having the OS sit on a usb drive is a neat idea and certainly appealing, there’s going to be a much higher chance of failure. A small cheap SSD is preferable in most cases. While some of the better thumb drive makers include a very basic wear leveling controller, everything about an SSD is more reliable both in theory and in my own real life experience.

There is an extension that prevents excessive writes by storing things on the system ram disk for longer periods. While also cool in theory, it doesn’t really help the tendency I have observed in thumb drives to just up and die regardless of use.

If you don’t want to use a sata port and have an internal usb3 header instead you’d like to use instead, then getting a usb-to-sata cable that supports UASP will allow for trim commands to work. I used this USB to MSATA adapter in my original NAS for years, reusing an old obsolete drive I had.

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What good timing, the topic of usb drives being shit just came up in this thread, so anyone considering “os on a thumb drive” should read the comments and be prepared for the higher risk.

On another note, I’ve come across sysadmin grumblings of even SSD’s having issues with dying in high stress environments (not something you need to worry about on a storage NAS probably). Apparently the flash chips can be fine and have plenty of life left, but the controller likely burns out or becomes unreliable, just like with an overclocked cpu.

As always, have backups.

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The question is whether this is the result of using OMV or just a bad disk?

I have been using OMV on an SD card for two years and have not observed wear problems at the moment but probably thanks to the use of F2R which reduces the use of media. Without it, you can actually kill the memory quite quickly, although solid ssd should rather be able to deal with no problem.

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Well, I don’t think that it would be a big deal if the USB Device failed after a couple of years: I have 2 Users and 3 groups with 1 ZFS Pool to manage - that is setup rather quickly.
Since I have an old SSD lying around, I’ll try that.
Thank you all and Sayonara!