USB recommendations for Diversion / Skynet?

[jjones7791]

Looking for recommendations for USB drives to be used for scripts / swap running Diversion / Skynet on an AX86U pro. Not interested in anything large-ish, as I only use this drive for running the amtm scripts and not for NAS in any way. Try to keep my io to a minimum since it pushes the CPU so much.

Tried Sandisk, but are garbage in my experience, even getting scripts / swap to work on them was a challenge / impossible it seems. Switched to a 3.0 8GB Kingston that worked flawlessly for close to a month, but now having issues with it. First indication was pixelserve stopped for no reason, reinstalled diversion and was back to normal. Then found diversion gone a few hours later when I checked amtm, which led me to the realizing the USB disappeared, unmounted. Seems pretty hot to the touch as well which is a little concerning, but I know these routers can run hot at times.

Any suggestions for successful deployments of USB that have ran for months would be greatly appreciated!

Update: Checked USB in disk management on both a windows and linux box and it's dead. Any reliable recommendations are much appreciated!

 

[Tech9]

SSD drive in external USB enclosure:

This is the most reliable solution and not expensive.

 

[jjones7791]

SSD drive in external USB enclosure:

View attachment 49871

View attachment 49872

This is the most reliable solution and not expensive.

As always, thanks @Tech9! But hoping for more of a thumb drive solution. Then again maybe that's where I'm going wrong.

 

[visortgw]

As always, thanks @Tech9! But hoping for more of a thumb drive solution. Then again maybe that's where I'm going wrong.

Yes, thumb drives transfer heat directly to router as opposed to USB SSD drives that are a bit away from router.

 

[bennor]

Looking for recommendations for USB drives to be used for scripts / swap running Diversion / Skynet on an AX86U pro.

There are a large number of past discussions on USB drives to use with Asus-Merlin:
https://www.google.com/search?q=best+usb+drive+asus-merlin+site:www.snbforums.com

As already been indicated, the current view is to just buy or repurpose a SSD or NVMe hard drive rather than try to use a USB flash drive. One can obtain a SSD drive and enclosure for relatively low cost these days.

 

[Crimliar]

Personally, I use a 120GB integral SSD. It's far from the fastest, and it's low capacity, but it's also low power (tested it with a USB power meter when I got it).

*Did you know if you run Docker on a Raspberry Pi with too many VMs, it's possible to kill a regular USB drive in under a week - as I found out just a couple of days ago!

 

[Tech9]

But hoping for more of a thumb drive solution.

Small means inefficient thermal design transferring heat from/to the router's USB port. Last time I used one SanDisk Ultra Flair drive for router experiments it heated up to 62C (144F). The same type drive died in 4 days with Ubuntu Server installed on it. Don't make your router as reliable as cheap USB stick.

I even matched blue label SSD drive with blue LED transparent case for you.

 

[jjones7791]

Thanks for the feedback everyone!

I'm going to give thumb drive one more go, partly because I don't want the larger footprint of the SSD, but also found another one laying around. Going to try adding some heat sinks to it and likewise run in USB 2.0. The one that died was running 3.0 and saw some threads saying that can be problematic as well.

If that doesn't work, SSD it will be!

 

[L&LD]

They don't die because of the heat, they die because they use up their write cycles.

Forget thumb drives and get what we all know works. External enclosure and a 128GB SSD or larger.

 

[Crimliar]

I guess another word of warning on USB thumb drives. I have a couple of Tcell 128GB, heatsink encased, UASP USB (redundant I know!) thumb drives. They were bought for the Raspberry Pi, but they and some similar (including some Sandisk) drives have an issue! UASP on them is not fully compliant, and they can end up "hanging" on some O/S including many Linux environments (work a dream in windows). You can set parameters at boot that disable features so they boot correctly, but it's definitely a pain!

 

[jjones7791]

They don't die because of the heat, they die because they use up their write cycles.

Forget thumb drives and get what we all know works. External enclosure and a 128GB SSD or larger.

So this topic has caused me to research this a bit further, and I see your point now. Flash is much more finite than SSD, so this makes sense. Not something I had really reviewed before as I honestly thought the memory wasn't that different which is not accurate at all.

So with that, thanks again @Tech9 and @L&LD , going with the setup you mentioned above and now I'll have some heat sinks for that pi I'm going to dive into at some point

Thanks as well @Crimliar , will keep this in mind!

 

[gattaca]

Good move. Your time is worth more than you think on hassling with this issue. As we've discussed in several earlier threads, Flash memory is literally "bottom of the barrel" silicon with a limited number of write-cycles. Heat is an enemy of electronic longevity too.

A good USB enclosure (UGREEN) + small SATA SSD will run for years without issues. I've used UGREEN USB/SATA enclosures + older SSDs I had laying around in all my routers. Mine are ~ 3-5 years old now. I am picky about the onboard USB/SATA controller, use enclosures with ASMEDIA and no JMICRON. Far too many problems with the latter last I dove into that...

https://www.snbforums.com/threads/i...s567-sata-6gb-s-bridge-ssd.73237/#post-696489

https://www.snbforums.com/threads/m...my-ac86u-router-what-is-reliable-brand.78503/

Cheers! Have a great, safe day!.

 

[jjones7791]

Good move. Your time is worth more than you think on hassling with this issue. As we've discussed in several earlier threads, Flash memory is literally "bottom of the barrel" silicon with a limited number of write-cycles. Heat is an enemy of electronic longevity too.

Could not agree more sir!

And thank you so much for the additional info about the USB controller, as I didn't take this into consideration when buying the enclosure, but lucked out, as the one I got has the ASMEDIA controller. Not easy to see but if you look close you can make it out.

Also for anyone interested, below is the brand I purchased off of Amazon, and I'm sure the one that Tech9 listed above fits the bill as well.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OJ3UJ2S/?tag=snbforums-20

Once I get this new setup up and running, I'll be sure to post any updates or issues I have with it, but not expecting them.

Thanks again everyone!!! Words cannot express how much I appreciate this forum.

 

[Tech9]

I'm sure the one that Tech9 listed above fits the bill as well

They work well. I have 3x ORICO cases, no issues.

 

[jjones7791]

Everyone, thank you again for your help. Completed new setup today and is working better than ever with the SSD! If I could kick myself in the butt for waiting to do this, well you know

With the flash drive I killed, Diversion and Skynet ran great, but UiDivStats was pushing my io so much my load was hitting over 5 at times, which was disappointing as I'm a charts junky and really loved the additional information it provided. With the SSD, all running with no issues and load barely hitting over 1.25 or less on average now! Love it!!!

@L&LD - @Tech9 - thank you for your hardware help and great tutorials you've provided around amtm!
@RMerlin - thank you for your amazing Asus firmware!
@Adamm - @thelonelycoder - @Jack Yaz - thank you all for the amazing code / scripts!

You are all amazing for the work you put into this, and I cannot say thank you enough!

 

[thelonelycoder]

With the flash drive I killed, Diversion and Skynet ran great, but UiDivStats was pushing my io so much my load was hitting over 5 at times, which was disappointing as I'm a charts junky and really loved the additional information it provided. With the SSD, all running with no issues and load barely hitting over 1.25 or less on average now! Love it!!!

This should be a hint for all: Use an SSD and not a thumb drive to run scripts on.

 

[jjones7791]

So one minor challenge, not really an issue per say, I've encountered with Skynet. It doesn't seem to be updating the stats automatically. It is working and it updates manually and I can see the stats via ssh, but I am fairly sure this wasn't the case on my previous build I killed. If I restart Skynet or of course use manual update, they appear as expected.

This thread is the closest I could find to my issue, and what steps were taken here don't seem to be working for me.
https://www.snbforums.com/threads/no-stats-in-skynets-webui-but-plenty-in-cli.70548/

Debug output below and all is good. Not a major issue since it's definitely working, but hope to get the stats back. I see Merlin just dropped an update to v 388 so will try that out and hopefully fixes, but not expecting it. Also note this is a full default install, I didn't change anything, so it's odd that the syslog locations shows as custom, but I've seen this repeat after a few wipes and installs.

Edit: It updated last night at midnight, soooo I'm just being impatient it seems. Looking at other posts from Adamm, it seems it updates the UI every 12 hours which is line with this, but if this is incorrect, someone please let me know.

 

[fcoayuso]

Wondering if i really need a case for my SSD drive. I have a couple of ssd drives laying around that i would like to use with my router. I always connect them with this sort of cable. Would it be ok to use this instead of a proper case enclosure? Also, as i have 2 - GTAX6000 router, can I connect 4 hard drives (2 each router)?
Cheers

 

[L&LD]

Depends on the SSD drive. And the enclosure.

If the latter offers a form of passive cooling, and the former normally runs hot, they may need each other. And of course, looks, protection (cats/kids/liquids), and drops.

 

[Tech9]

Also, as i have 2 - GTAX6000 router, can I connect 4 hard drives (2 each router)?

You have 2x Raspberry Pi with only 0.5GB RAM available at best, already busy with what home router does and running almost everything on a single core. Connect 8 hard drives, why only 4? When your network starts crashing or you get corrupted drives come back here and ask more questions.