Can anyone recommend some good USB drives and internal USB 3.0 to USB adapters for Unraid?

[pestermess]

I'm building a simple machine to test Unraid since I got a lifetime license (thankfully before the price hike) for my birthday. I mostly use Proxmox and TrueNAS Scale, but I figured it’s time to give Unraid a try. Even though I’ve heard it’s not as good as Proxmox or TrueNAS Scale, I still want to experiment with it. The one thing I really dislike, though, is the USB requirement, I’ve had so many bad experiences with overheating USBs and poor quality overall. I’m looking to install a USB drive internally using a USB 3.0 header adapter for a clean and simple setup, but I can also use the I/O ports if needed. Can anyone recommend some quality USB drives and adapters from Amazon.ca or eBay.ca?

[CyberneticTitan]

Unraid load on the USB is very light. It loads everything to memory on first boot, then reads from the USB only when it (or other plugins) need to reference configs (i.e. docker templates). You can pretty much use any name brand USB and get away with it, especially if you regularly back up the USB (to a place not on your server).

 

But for reference I use some Kingston Datatraveller 100 G3 drive and it's been working for the past 2 years.

[pestermess]

7 minutes ago, CyberneticTitan said:

Unraid load on the USB is very light. It loads everything to memory on first boot, then reads from the USB only when it (or other plugins) need to reference configs (i.e. docker templates). You can pretty much use any name brand USB and get away with it, especially if you regularly back up the USB (to a place not on your server).

 

But for reference I use some Kingston Datatraveller 100 G3 drive and it's been working for the past 2 years.

Thanks! I actually already have one, but it's been through a lot over the past two years. I might go ahead and grab a new one so it's fresh and in better shape!

[porina]

Both my Unraid installs are on Sandisk Cruzer Fit, although that doesn't seem available any more and might be replaced by the Ultra Fit. I like them as they're small so don't stick out if used externally. Can help internally too depending on how much other stuff you got going on.

[manikyath]

my unraid instal lives on a 1GB flash drive i got for free. 

 

also, no reason to go for a USB 3.0 drive honestly, just more connections to potentially go iffy if you ask me.

 

as for a header thing, i personally prefer to just buy one of those front panel cable things, so that the drive can be tucked away somewhere accessible but not bump-able.

[Jarsky]

Just get an ultra compact USB drive and use the external port. 

I use a Kingston DataTraveler Micro. It's very overkill as the smallest size is 64GB but it's USB 3.x and ive had great reliability with DataTravelers. 

Of course there are many cheaper and smaller ultra compact ones out there too. 

 

As stated the USB drive is for the most part just used at startup. 

Mine gets accessed a bit more often due to custom user scripts. 

Also keep in mind it will use the USB more if you enable logging to the device; I have mine offloading to my syslog server.

 

When you've set up your UnRAID; also good idea to setup flash backup to cloud to backup all  your configs etc...

You can manually make a copy and download a local copy as well if you want.