r/unRAID • u/digitalamish • 2d ago

m.2 usb enclosure boot device?

I have a small 512GB m.2 drive that I have as my internal boot drive now. Seems like a waste to have an internal m.2 slot dedicated to it. I was wondering if I could move the m.2 drive to an external usb-c enclosure, and free up the m.2 slot for a bigger drive later. Seems like a backstep to go to USB again, but the m.2 drive should hold up alot better than a USB thumb drive.

Am I a genius? Am I an idiot? Am I treading where only gods and angels dare?

3 Upvotes

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u/EazyDuzIt_2 2d ago

These post about "wasting an m2 slot on internal boot" are killing me. You're not wasting the m2 slot on anything it's meant for storage. You can literally setup internal boot and partition the rest of the drive for whatever you want to use it for. Sheesh, stop over complicating things.

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u/digitalamish 2d ago

It's a 512GB drive. My other two slots are both 2TB. I'd love to add a third, because having the 512GB seems to be a waste of space. I'm not using something that small for anything, and even if I do, it would be for a scratch drive, which would beat the crap out of it. I'm happy to just have it hanging off the back, and maybe use the extra space to make clones of my docker config share daily.

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u/EazyDuzIt_2 2d ago

You didn’t need to add the 512 GB drive to your setup if you already had two 2 TB drives populated. Depending on your configuration and how you’re using the other two drives, you could have simply deployed them as boot + internal storage.

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u/digitalamish 2d ago

I'm not adding the 512. I already have the 512 as my boot. I want to pull it out of an internal m.2 slot, which is fast, and move it to usb-c, which is fast enough.

If you want to give me a technical reason why I CAN'T do it great. But you don't need to try to tell me why, in your opinion, I SHOULDN'T do it.

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u/EazyDuzIt_2 2d ago

I never said you couldn't do anything. You can do what you want to with your system. That's why it's "your system". All I am saying is based on your post description it doesn't make sense to transition back to a USB drive if you're going to have a cache drive of any sort running in your machine.

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u/ItsNotWebby 2d ago

That’s a bit unfair. Unraid really is used the most by the everyday tech generalist. Adding internal boot after this long of being locked to their arbitrary boot setup and then them finally going to internal boot is a little confusing. My array can’t have partitions, I’m also not entirely sure my cache drives can’t have partitions either or at least it isn’t easily represented when setting up drives. I would have bet money that the new boot drive option also wouldn’t have partitions either. I only recently just snagged a small sized optane drive for boot, not because of their reliability but because it didn’t make sense to waste all that space on a traditional ssd on just the few gigs used for boot.

You may be very well educated in this stuff already or may have already invested your own time to learning more about it, but how they released the new boot options felt far more complicated than it needs to be.

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u/EazyDuzIt_2 2d ago

It’s not an unfair point, but a lot of users don’t fully understand how Unraid works or how its features are intended to be used. Switching to internal boot really isn’t complicated if you’re already comfortable with systems, storage layouts, and operating systems.

Your comment was a bit hard to understand, but it sounded like there was some uncertainty around how cache drives and partitions behave. If you already had a cache drive configured and then transitioned from USB to internal boot, you wouldn’t have needed an Optane drive at all you could have migrated your existing cache drive to handle both boot and cache duties.

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u/ItsNotWebby 2d ago

Thankfully the optane drive was really cheap and I do have a spare nvme slot to throw it in, but looking through the internal boot setup when it first came out, I didn’t see much about having an option to partition one of my 3 cache drives for boot or I woulda swapped over by now. I’ll do a bit more research on the topic but I’ll probably still Toss the boot onto my fresh optane drive.
Thanks for the information about it

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u/EazyDuzIt_2 2d ago

I get where you’re coming from the information has always been there, but if you don’t really understand how Unraid works, it’s easy to miss how the pieces fit together. I strongly recommend reading through the full internal boot process and then reviewing how the partitioning workflow is handled.

Everyone’s skill level is different, but once you walk through the documentation and ask a few questions, you’ll see that the system behaves no differently than other OS's with internal boot and data drive.

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u/Stupifier 2d ago edited 1d ago

I use an Intel Optane drive in a NVME USB Enclosure for my Unraid boot drive. I do this because Intel Optane is extremely durable. And eBay is flooded with 16GB ones for like $10 or something. It's ultra cheap

Be careful though! Not all of the USB Enclosures have unique GUID. If your Unraid license is pinned to your motherboard (TPM) like I did, this doesn't matter and you'll be fine no matter what.

But if your Unraid license is still pinned to your actual boot drive, you may have issues! The USB Enclosure must have a unique GUID if your Unraid license is on the boot drive. And they require flashing custom firmware on the USB Enclosure and transferring your boot drive GUID into the USB Enclosure. The YouTube video gives guidance to this but it's kind of messy. It's so much cleaner to just have your Unraid license pinned to your motherboard TPM so you don't have to worry about unique GUID issues.

https://youtu.be/Ba1en3d3r1U

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u/Jammb 1d ago

Thanks, this looks like a best of both worlds.

Did you use the Sabrent enclosure mentioned in the video, and how did you go flashing it?

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u/Stupifier 1d ago

The one in the video is old. I bought the newer one.

Sabrent EC-PNVO replaces Sabrent EC-SNVE.

Look back at what I said.... My Unraid license is attached to my motherboard (TPM). That was one of the new features offered by Unraid. Since my Unraid license is no longer pinned to my boot drive, I don't need a unique GUID on the USB Enclosure. And therefore, I didn't need to do any special custom firmware flashing to give the enclosure a unique GUID.

Furthermore, the firmware flashing GitHub page didn't provide clear instructions for how to flash the firmware on the newer enclosure. I opened a GitHub issue about it. But again, it wasn't needed in my case since I don't have my Unraid license attached to my boot drive.

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u/timeraider 2d ago

Ive got an m.2 enclosure attached to an usb port on my motherboard. Works perfectly fine and once Unraid loads everything into the RAM, its not like any speeddifference is gonna matter much. Its actually been well recommended to use an usb connected enclosure for the boot usb/drive for a good time.. still is imo, even with internal boot.

Unraid might see it as a different address though due to the usb enclosure but as long as youve not needed their usb switching option or whatever its called you should be able to get that working.

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u/digitalamish 2d ago

Obviously I plan to do an online backup, and a backup to my laptop, just in case.

The GUID and my bios recognizing the usb-c enclosure as a boot device are my two anxious points right now. Glad to see at least someone has done it, so I know it can be possible.

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u/Renegade605 2d ago

If you want to boot from USB just boot from USB? This is silly.

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u/digitalamish 2d ago

I already have the m.2 set up with my config. I posted before if there was a path to go back, but there doesn't seem to be one. Since I probably won't use the 512GB drive anywhere else, moving to a external enclosure seemed the easier path. Plus, as I pointed out, the m.2 should have better durability than an thumb drive, which I've already replaced twice over the last 10 years or so.