Over 30 ISOs on Ventoy lost

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Ever since I figured out a ZFS NAS, I've been paranoid about disk-level corruption. I have so many HDDs that I *thought* were good, but after a little while in a ZFS array, have shown a bunch of read errors that would have otherwise never been noticed.

Yesterday I was looking at some 7z archives (my backup system is to take a disk, run fstrim, then take the image and pipe it into 7z) and I tested the 7z archive just out of curiousity... and it came back with errors. I looked at the ZFS interface and it reported no file errors... weird. I tried copying the file to a different drive and testing it again... still errors. I tested the original file, and it came back with... no errors? I tested the copy again and it had no errors either. Turns out it was a slightly unstable memory frequency that was fixed by slowing it down just a little. The error was introduced during archive testing, not during reading, which is why the ZFS pool showed no errors.

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AntLive9218@reddit

Turns out it was a slightly unstable memory frequency that was fixed by slowing it down just a little.

That "fixed" is more like the issue getting delayed. Hardware keeps on degrading over time, chances are good that the issue will be back.

EDC is so common, that it often covers even data in rest, but it's almost guaranteed to cover data in transit, except in a few very exceptional market segmentation cases, like "client" memory.

Non-ECC RAM is possibly the worst possible data resiliency mistake, because as you could see, it makes you unable to even tell if you've sent out the correct data elsewhere.

Operating a file server without ECC memory means that you aren't paranoid enough about corruption.

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A_Canadian_boi@reddit

I don't think it was degradation, personally. This is on a NAS using a Ryzen 3700X and a brand new DDR4 kit. The instability only occured at DDR4-3200, which is the absolute maximum that the 3700X's memory controller can handle, and it's an XMP profile so it's only somewhat guaranteed from the manufacturer anyway. I could likely tweak it to be stable, but I ended up lowering it to 3000MT/s which was stable with the same timings.

As a fairly experienced overclocker, I was pretty surprised this was unstable, and that MemTest86 didn't catch this, but OCCT somehow did. It feels like it was just barely on the edge of stability. IMO I reckon it must be a memory controller thing, as the sticks are known good from testing in other machines. I didn't try raising VSOC, maybe I that would give a clue.

This NAS is, to put it mildly, budget limited, so ECC is mostly off the table. I could maybe go with an old Xeon and some ECC DDR4, but I do sometimes use this as a render server, so I need at least a little bit of performance, and AM4 has some very performant processors, not to mention being extremely cheap.

Honorable mention to DDR5, which is always ECC internally, the only difference is that ECC DDR5 will also have ECC in transit. Maybe I should move to an AM5 EPYC next, haha.

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AntLive9218@reddit

This may have not been degradation, but be aware that all devices in use are slowly degrading mostly due to electromigration. That's why there's always some overclock headroom, as that's the buffer that's not needed right after unpacking, but may be needed after the planned lifetime of a couple of years of heavy use.

Non-ECC memory is especially nasty due to the testing problem you mentioned. There's just not single good way to test memory and be sure it's all good, and stability will change based on temperature too, which will be raised with other devices increasing the ambient temperature.

A NAS without ECC memory is a good way to keep on carrying bit rot, and get issues that should have been theoretically prevented by protection. I've just recently seen a budget ZFS setup with RAIDZ showing initially confusing errors, which are not even deterministic. Not sure yet if data is salvageable, or the likely memory corruption got it before it was stored.

The internal ECC of DDR5 is only there to increase manufacturing yields, because density is way too high. Aside from obviously not protecting data in transit, it also doesn't address the really significant issue of IMCs really not being able to keep up with the way too high UDIMM stress, so I've seen tons of memory issues since late DDR4 and early DDR5.

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Electrical_Tomato_73@reddit

Just curious, why do you need "so many ISOs"? I can imagine needing one, maybe two, for rescue purposes or if you want to securely/privately use someone else's computer. And if it's gone, just download again and put on a new USB? What am I missing?

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AdRoz78@reddit

i have 40 isos on my usb, just for fun. nothing more than that. convenience of not constantly formatting which wears down the usb

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speedyundeadhittite@reddit

What all of this has with Linux, either. No idea.

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Extreme-Ad-9290@reddit (OP)

Ventoy often used for multiple Linux ISO files. And I have a distrohopping problem

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justmeandmyrobot@reddit

Bros got a hypervisor in his ass, obviously.

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Electrical_Tomato_73@reddit

But what's that got to do with Ventoy?

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pfp-disciple@reddit

Another moral: have backups of important data, preferably kept separate

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clearlybreghldalzee@reddit

how can distros ISOs ever be "important data" ?

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pfp-disciple@reddit

I wrongly thought OP was upset at the loss of data, which implied to me that it is important.

Important isn't the same as rare. If it is important that OP has that particular selection of ISOs, then that could be a day's time to reacquire them. Perhaps longer if any are very niche, very specific versions, poor network connection, etc.

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Extreme-Ad-9290@reddit (OP)

Not a major issue. I torrent my isos anyways bc it is faster.

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Extreme-Ad-9290@reddit (OP)

That is not the main issue. I can get it back. I'm just annoyed at how bad the USB is. But for my home server, I definitely keep backups. Planning on getting a sata to USB cable to use my extra SSDs and hhds laying around for backups.

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onlysubscribedtocats@reddit

Respectfully, flash storage is terrible for long-time data preservation. Even a 'good' drive will fail.

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ResearchingStories@reddit

There is a flathub app which allows you to access files from a corrupted disk. I forget what it is called.

Also, that flash drive worked great for me for many years.

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pfp-disciple@reddit

Good to hear!

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Acu17y@reddit

Happy cake day 🎈

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pipoo23@reddit

USB sticks are not that great for long term storage. I don't care what brand it is, I never keep important stuff on them.

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cla_ydoh@reddit

Yeah, even trusted brands can have bad products, or cheap out somewhere.

I have had good luck with Samsung so I usually stick with their USB-C sticks. I myself had poor luck with Lexar but that was ages ago, and I haven't used one in a while. I had a slim Samsung that ran as an OS drive in Chromebooks for a few years without failing, somehow.

I took a change on a Sandisk retractable USB-C stick that is mostly metal, after having a couple of their flippy ones, and have been happy so far, for about 8 months or so. I use it to hold some synced docouments, images, etc as well as \~6 ISO images as an 'emergency' toolkit. Win 10 and 11, Clonezilla, Kubuntu current and LTS, Ubuntu LTS, plus my daily KDE neon. This covers most use cases in my sphere.

Sure, I could get by with fewer, but I have the space.

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AntLive9218@reddit

Does "trusted brand" even mean anything in this case?

All of them use the worst bin chips for these kind of products, and then if you buy from retailers engaging in fraudulent practices like Amazon, it's quite easy to end up with even worse, a counterfeit device.

The vast majority of USB storage devices and SD cards from various manufacturers either just kept on losing data, or died mysteriously even with light usage, so at this point I just avoid them.

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Formal-Bad-8807@reddit

Ventoy is buggy, it will work good for a while, but then dies

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FryBoyter@reddit

Nowadays, I would almost always recommend an NVMe in an external enclosure. These can also handle more write accesses than even the best standard USB stick.

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lupin-san@reddit

Buy a new one and move on. USB drives (mass storage device class) are pretty much disposable no matter the size or price. These use the cheapest, lowest quality NAND flash out there.

Get a portable SSD or an internal SSD + enclosure if you want something that will survive more than a couple drive writes.

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firedrakes@reddit

normal that a good brand for usb.

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4475636B79@reddit

3-2-1 for any important data. Three copies, two different types of media, one off site.

I'll never forget the story of a photographer who had like ten years of his work stolen. He had multiple backups but all in the same room. If it's important, it's worth at least setting up a NAS at a friend or family members house if you don't want to do cloud storage. You can set one up at your place for them as well.

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Extreme-Ad-9290@reddit (OP)

Yeah, this is a different model. I've had good luck with other lexar drives, but just not this one. Could be a one off, but disappointed in the suden corruption

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Acu17y@reddit

Eh I can only imagine yes ;(