USB wear with Entware

[sbsnb]

My USB drive failed today a little after a year of use, and I didn't know until I rebooted after upgrading to 384.9 and everything stopped working and my log was bombed with errors galore. It had not occurred to me that Entware might write to it all the time and wear it out like that. If that's the case, is there anything I can do short of making constant backups and switching over when the device fails?

It seems like such a waste to throw away flash drives every few months or a year if it doesn't have to be that way.

 

[bbunge]

My USB drive failed today a little after a year of use, and I didn't know until I rebooted after upgrading to 384.9 and everything stopped working and my log was bombed with errors galore. It had not occurred to me that Entware might write to it all the time and wear it out like that. If that's the case, is there anything I can do short of making constant backups and switching over when the device fails?

It seems like such a waste to throw away flash drives every few months or a year if it doesn't have to be that way.

Did you consider it was corrupted by doing a firmware upgrade without removing the USB drive?
Format it and keep using it. Should work. AMTM works great for setting up a USB drive and entware.

 

[skeal]

The issue you probably have is that the system is forcing the unmount of the usb drive and that can cause drive corruption. I'm working with @thelonelycoder to hopefully devise a shutdown script that gracefully unmounts the drives connected. Stay tuned to the amtm thread.

 

[sbsnb]

Did you consider it was corrupted by doing a firmware upgrade without removing the USB drive?
Format it and keep using it. Should work. AMTM works great for setting up a USB drive and entware.

It's hardware broken. It won't work in my PC either. Windows 7 just says "Device cannot start"

 

[skeal]

The drive doesn't need to mount to be worked on, in some cases. Have you tried a partitioning program? There are a few free ones available for windows.

 

[sbsnb]

It's not that it can't mount. It can't even start the hardware. Even using the RT-AC88U. It's completely inaccessible on both systems on the device level. I can't even get to partition it when it's not a device available to partition.

 

[ColinTaylor]

It's hardware broken. It won't work in my PC either. Windows 7 just says "Device cannot start"

It doesn't sound like it was caused by Entware IMHO (it's not as if you're getting any read/write errors). It's more likely to be the fact that it's been continuously plugged into your router all that time and the hardware has failed. My flash drive has been plugged into my router for 5 years now and in all that time it has been "hot to touch". But it's still going, which is probably a credit to Verbatim's build quality.

 

[sbsnb]

It doesn't sound like it was caused by Entware IMHO (it's not as if you're getting any read/write errors). It's more likely to be the fact that it's been continuously plugged into your router all that time and the hardware has failed. My flash drive has been plugged into my router for 5 years now and in all that time it has been "hot to touch". But it's still going, which is probably a credit to Verbatim's build quality.

Exactly, but NAND fails by write/erase operations not time. It's probably some junk TLC NAND in the Samsung FIT that can only take a few hundred cycles. I just wondered if Entware was writing logs or something to the device that would accelerate the wear.

It's too bad the device doesn't have wear leveling, because it was 98% unused the entire time. There's plenty of room to write to new places instead of overwriting the same NAND for every write.

 

[skeal]

Exactly, but NAND fails by write/erase operations not time. It's probably some junk TLC NAND in the Samsung FIT that can only take a few hundred cycles. I just wondered if Entware was writing logs or something to the device that would accelerate the wear.

It's too bad the device doesn't have wear leveling, because it was 98% unused the entire time. There's plenty of room to write to new places instead of overwriting the same NAND for every write.

How often do you reboot the router?

 

[sbsnb]

How often do you reboot the router?

Every two months or so. Usually only when there's a firmware update.

 

[ColinTaylor]

I just wondered if Entware was writing logs or something to the device that would accelerate the wear.

Entware itself doesn't have any logs, but the applications you're using might. You'd have to look at those.

It's too bad the device doesn't have wear leveling, because it was 98% unused the entire time. There's plenty of room to write to new places instead of overwriting the same NAND for every write.

Your making some big assumptions there. Even ignoring what is happening at a hardware level, first you'd need to know whether or not there is actually any significant writing taking place. Even if there were that doesn't necessarily mean that the same blocks are being overwritten, that is partly down to how the application works and also the filesystem. I'm not saying you're wrong, just that you're leaping to a conclusion without any supporting evidence. It's equally possible that it's just a thermal failure.

 

[sbsnb]

It's equally possible that it's just a thermal failure.

I'm going to go with a large metal-cased drive this time for heat dissipation and see if it makes any difference. Now I know to mirror the device periodically to make easy swapping in case of failure.

 

[Zonkd]

My USB drive failed today a little after a year of use, and I didn't know until I rebooted after upgrading to 384.9 and everything stopped working and my log was bombed with errors galore. It had not occurred to me that Entware might write to it all the time and wear it out like that. If that's the case, is there anything I can do short of making constant backups and switching over when the device fails?

It seems like such a waste to throw away flash drives every few months or a year if it doesn't have to be that way.

Damn I feel for you man I would be frustrated needing to buy replacement flash drives as often as that too. How many flash drives have failed on you so far? What brands have you been using?

 

[sbsnb]

This is the first failure, but it's only been a little over a year. The drive was an 8GB Samsung FIT. I wrongly assumed that since their SSDs were among the best MTBF there are that the reliability would trickle down to their flash drives. I still have a 512MB ! Sandisk Cruzer Micro that I bought in 2004 that works without error.

 

[skeal]

I recommend a cheap drive. I bought 4x8g usb drives and installed one and copied one. I haven't had a corrupted or messed up drive for a long time since making sure the usb drive is unmounted before reboot. Also what entware stuff do have going?

 

[Zonkd]

This is the first failure, but it's only been a little over a year. The drive was an 8GB Samsung FIT. I wrongly assumed that since their SSDs were among the best MTBF there are that the reliability would trickle down to their flash drives. I still have a 512MB ! Sandisk Cruzer Micro that I bought in 2004 that works without error.

No doubt Samsung is a great company making high quality tvs, sleek laptops and killer phones. I’d contact customer support about warranty replacement on the flash drive.

 

[sbsnb]

Also what entware stuff do have going?

Just dnscrypt-proxy2 and skynet. I know skynet is in jffs, but it bombs out when there's not /opt, so it's doing something there.

Feb  3 07:35:14 Skynet: [*] USB Not Found - Sleeping For 10 Seconds ( Attempt 11 Of 10 )
Feb  3 07:35:24 Skynet: [*] Problem With USB Install Location - Please Fix Immediately!
Feb  3 07:35:24 Skynet: [*] When Fixed Run ( sh /jffs/scripts/firewall restart )

 

[dave14305]

Just dnscrypt-proxy2 and skynet. I know skynet is in jffs, but it bombs out when there's not /opt, so it's doing something there.

Feb  3 07:35:14 Skynet: [*] USB Not Found - Sleeping For 10 Seconds ( Attempt 11 Of 10 )
Feb  3 07:35:24 Skynet: [*] Problem With USB Install Location - Please Fix Immediately!
Feb  3 07:35:24 Skynet: [*] When Fixed Run ( sh /jffs/scripts/firewall restart )

Skynet script is in jffs, but it writes a few files often to /tmp/mnt/<usb>/skynet. Logs if debugging is on, and the ipset configuration every hour.