I’m booting openwrt off a usb c thumb drive connected to a fanless Celeron mini pc. The pc is cool but the thumb drive is so hot i can’t touch it.

Any ideas?

  • @MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    10•1 year ago

    Pretty normal tbh, a lot of those thumb drives get very hot. Probably not great for its lifespan though.

    Best bet is install an SSD if you have a spot for an M.2 or 2.5" drive inside.

  • SGGEnglish
    10•1 year ago

    My guess is log files are being written to it? Might want to install a proper drive internally and redirect log storage. With less activity the USB drive should not heat up anywhere near as much.

    • mFatOPEnglish
      4•1 year ago

      Thanks yeah I have a lot of services and Docker containers running on the device. I’ll try disabling logging.

      • SGGEnglish
        11•1 year ago

        If you have docker containers and other stuff all on that USB drive I’d really reccomend getting it all off that USB (not just logging) and onto a proper drive of some kind. USB thumb sticks are not reliable long term storage, you will wake up to find the drive failing one day and good chance you lose everything on it with little to no warning.

    • lemmyvoreEnglish
      4•1 year ago

      I wouldn’t call it normal. It’s the norm because the market is flooded with crappy drives using JMicron chips. Buy something with a Realtek or Asmedia chip and it will work fine without getting hot.

    • @teawrecks@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      1•1 year ago

      It’s normal for it to heat up under load, but it’s not normal for it to be under load 24/7 indefinitely.

  • @MMK21@programming.devEnglish
    4•1 year ago

    As others have said, thumb drives are generally designed for lighter loads than running an OS, so yours probably just doesn’t have enough of a heat-spreading design to keep it cool.

    To help you investigate what’s causing the thumb drive to be accessed so much, the iostat -d -x 1 will tell you what its percentage utilisation is (rightmost column). You can then use sudo iotop to see what processes are using the drive.

    In the long run though, I’d definitely recommend switching over to a cheap SATA SSD, especially since your mini PC will likely let you install one internally somewhere. In my experience, your system will probably feel snappier too!

  • @NullGator@lemmy.ca
    English
    2•1 year ago

    UNRAID is designed to run off a USB drive, they have recommendations on what USBs to buy on their site, might be worth a gander. You should be able to write all the info on your current USB to the new one without having to reconfigure anything.