Move the boot pool

TrueNAS General
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i had a satadom fail in a mini and i have the system running on a usb stick for now. other than reinstalling can i move the boot pool to a another set of drives…like two ssd’s that i could setup in a boot mirror?

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Just export the configuration from the UI and install TrueNAS anew on a different device.

A boot mirror is not actually all that helpful, you can still end up with a server that doesn’t boot, depending on which drive happens to be the one selected in the BIOS vs which one failed.

Since it’s so easy to reinstall, if you have a secure copy of the configuration file, a boot mirror is unnessary for most people.

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I believe you could also clone the USB boot drive on the new SSD/SATADOM one using a different machine, but I wouldn’t bet on it.

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Uh, why not just use ZFS Mirroring from the USB to one of the new SSDs?

Whence done, you can ZFS Mirror on to the 2nd SSD if desired. Then when that is done, un-Mirror the USB device.

There may be a problem creating a 3 way Mirror with the GUI. If so, whence you have the new SSD Mirrored / resilved, you remove the USB. That allows you the 2nd Mirror slot for the 2nd SSD.

Not saying you have to use 2 x SSDs for the boot-pool, just showing the options.

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the boot usb is 64 gig and my ssd’s are 1tb…which i will swap out for 256gb. i will just make a config backup and reinstall…:slight_smile: thanks for the suggestions.

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I agree, I dont use them any more, once my server, lived in a server hotel in a different country, has lost one of the two drives, but refused to start. I had to bring it out and repair, because it refused to boot off of a single disk.
I dont see any points using that. Also, as others mentioned, TrueNAS has an excellent way migrating your data by the saved config files.

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There were a few reports of issues with that procedure failing because the USB stick was ashift=9 but the new SSD really wanted ashift=12.
Loading a configuration file on a fresh install is simple and failsafe.

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IIRC, in the past, this could cause issues with ashift.

I’m not sure this is an issue any more.

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While I agree that a mirror is not as good as a HA approach, it’s also a simple way to reconstitute a boot drive. Presumably it’s why SM included two SATADOM ports on my NAS’ motherboard.

Speaking of working backups, I wish iXsystems would re-allow wider boot pool mirrors. In FreeNAS, one could have a 3-wide mirror, enabling a backup along with a copy of the boot config to make a complete sneakernet solution to clone a NAS.

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