Just as an additional data point... I started out with FreeNAS ~18 months ago but I'm not sure at the moment which version that was (I could check later). Abou

Just as an additional data point... I started out with FreeNAS ~18 months ago but I'm not sure at the moment which version that was (I could check later). About a year ago, I updated to 11.2-U2 and just two days ago I've updated to 11.3-U1. Since the beginning, I've had the "freenas-boot" pool on a pair of USB3 flash drives -- I don't recall which manufacturer/model I'm using but I did specifically buy "higher end" flash drives to use for this purpose. I do a weekly scrub of the "freenas-boot" pool and, thus far, I've experienced no issues with them whatsoever. FWIW, it's very rare for me to actually log in to the FreeNAS system to make any changes or perform any "administration". I set it up initially and, since then, I've mostly left it alone and it "just works".