Should I replace an 11yo boot SSD?

TrueNAS General
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I have been a freenas/truenas user for over a decade. First using a flash drive but quickly switching to an SSD as boot device. It’s a 60G Kingston drive (SV300S37A60G).

Drive stats are still OK according to scrutiny (3% realloc sectors, 3% uncorrectable errors, 1% reallocation event and 120 soft read errors but that number has been stable for ages).

The again, 11 years powered on…

Replace just in case? If so, what would be the easiest way to replace? dd from old to new or a fresh install and db restore?

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I’d say first make sure you have a recent backup of your config file as with that losing your boot drive is just simply an inconvenience and nothing major. Nothing stopping you adding a second drive of the same size or bigger and creating a boot mirror so if your old one fails all is well.

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In your place i would:

  • backup config
  • move system dataset from boot pool (if you have It there, and you have interest to keep It)
  • order a replacement until price will not growth anymore…
  • if you are not scared about down time, let your actual disk end his life… Otherwise replace It
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Oh wow, yes, I never realised that I could just add another drive to the boot pool and have that mirrored as well! Excellent idea. Saves a ton of hassle :-).

Many thanks!!

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As long as you keep a recent configuration file at hand, you may replace any time you want—or just keep Ol’Faithful SSD until it does pass away.

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It’s like that “running out of gas” Seinfeld episode. I’d back it up and push it to the limit, just to see how long it can survive. It sounds rock solid and now I’m curious.

I have a pair of SSD for a boot mirror and they’re both 4 years old so I wonder the same thing. They’re not degrading, that I know of, so no signs of a slow death.

Let it ride. I have a pair of ssd on hand if or when they do give up so my only concern is a recent config backup.

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Quick update: I ordered an m.2 ssd as my Mobo has a slot for it. Installed it and … the Mobo no longer recognises my old boot SSD. Probably a Mobo firmware thing (Asus PRIME B450M-A II). Since I had another SSD on hand, I took out the m.2 again, added the other ssd and then things booted up again fine. Anyways, I’ll keep this rather than trying to update Mobo bios and find incompatibilities between CPU, mem, ….

Added the ssd to the boot pool and everything is singing and dancing again (started ‘resilvering’, finished OK)!

One question though, my assumption is that the mirror makes the added disk bootable by itself, right? Otherwise, if my old disk fails, I could not boot it…

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You will need to make sure your BIOS has both disks as bootable entries. The mirror copies everything you need to boot but the BIOS needs to be told what the order of play is.

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Excellent and exactly what I was hoping for. Thanks for confirming!!

Now I am interested to see how long my old SSD will survive :wink:

Have a wonderful day.

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Why not use smartctl -x to view the smart stats and use that as your guide on whether or not you need to replace your drive. If there is a lot of wear left I’d leave it alone. If it aint broke don’t fix it.

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