Recommended USB Thumb Drive to use for OS

  • Hello all. I would like to boot and run OMV from a USB flash thumb drive. The use will be for a home media NAS, no heavy usage other than the occasional movie being played or computer being backed up.


    If it matters, here are the details of the machine. It will be going into an HP z220F, with an i5-3470 and 8GB non-ECC ram. I only have one storage drive, a WD RED 6TB HDD (plan on adding a second drive in the near future). The machine is not put together yet, but the parts listed have already been acquired.


    I am looking for a recommendation for a specific USB drive to use. Any suggestions would be appreciated. I don't want to mess up and waste money on a poor USB choice.


    Thanks in advance for the help.

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    If you use the flash plugin in OMV then it is not very critical. The flash plugin means a lot for the longevity of the USB stick.


    But still, I would recommend a SanDisk Ultra USB 3.1 or 3.0. 32 GB. Or better... Ultra Fit are nice and small...


    One problem is that there are a lot of fakes sold. Make sure to buy from a reputable source and test the memory.


    I have a RPi 4 running (not with OMV) some surveillance software from a SanDisk Extreme Pro USB 3.1 128GB Solid State. That would be overkill for OMV with the flash plugin.


    it is a good idea to buy (at least) two identical USB sticks. And once you have OMV running OK, clone the configuration so you have a copy. This can come in very nice if you reconfigure OMV and break something. Then it is very easy to recover. There are many threads here from users that have ignored this precaution. And they may have to reinstall OMV from scratch instead of just using a backup stick.

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    Or better... Ultra Fit are nice and small...

    Too small? I would be afraid it is running hot. But I have to admit I have no experience with that one, just with other "no name" very small thumb drives.

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    Too small? I would be afraid it is running hot. But I have to admit I have no experience with that one, just with other "no name" very small thumb drives.

    I have a couple ultra fits on OMV systems. Never noticed them being hot and they work very well. So I would give adoby's recommendation a +1.

    omv 7.0.4-2 sandworm | 64 bit | 6.5 proxmox kernel

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    • Offizieller Beitrag

    Done

    :D I was just confirming that it was a good choice. I wasn't telling you to like the post :)

    omv 7.0.4-2 sandworm | 64 bit | 6.5 proxmox kernel

    plugins :: omvextrasorg 7.0 | kvm 7.0.10 | compose 7.1.2 | k8s 7.0-6 | cputemp 7.0 | mergerfs 7.0.3


    omv-extras.org plugins source code and issue tracker - github


    Please try ctrl-shift-R and read this before posting a question.

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  • Thank you!

  • Not trying to hijack this topic, but I dont want to create a new one either:


    I've read a couple of posts on this forum discouraging the installation of the OS on a USB stick, is this no longer applicable then?


    Currently I"ve installed my OS on 128GB M.2 SSD, maybe I'm better off installing the OS to a USB stick en repurposing the SSD

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    One common problem with USB sticks and SD cards is that some users install software and that software use the flash memory for databases and metadata and other stuff. That will soon fill the root fs and also cause a lot of writes to the flash memory, causing it to fail sooner.


    Typically it is docker images, media players and streamers that use /var/lib for storage.


    This can be handled by moving /var/lib to another drive and link from the original location. Or, better, by using docker and setting the docker base path to a "docker" share, created specifically for docker, on another drive.

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    I've read a couple of posts on this forum discouraging the installation of the OS on a USB stick, is this no longer applicable then?

    Were they old posts?

    omv 7.0.4-2 sandworm | 64 bit | 6.5 proxmox kernel

    plugins :: omvextrasorg 7.0 | kvm 7.0.10 | compose 7.1.2 | k8s 7.0-6 | cputemp 7.0 | mergerfs 7.0.3


    omv-extras.org plugins source code and issue tracker - github


    Please try ctrl-shift-R and read this before posting a question.

    Please put your OMV system details in your signature.
    Please don't PM for support... Too many PMs!

  • One common problem with USB sticks and SD cards is that some users install software and that software use the flash memory for databases and metadata and other stuff. That will soon fill the root fs and also cause a lot of writes to the flash memory, causing it to fail sooner.


    Typically it is docker images, media players and streamers that use /var/lib for storage.


    This can be handled by moving /var/lib to another drive and link from the original location. Or, better, by using docker and setting the docker base path to a "docker" share, created specifically for docker, on another drive.

    Good advice to keep in mind, thank you.


    Were they old posts?

    I'm sorry I didn't look at or remember the date. I came across these topics by google examining a different issue. There is a big chance they were.

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