9.3 upgrade not joy

[n7qpp]

Some background information I have been running 9.2.x from some time on this hardware with no issues. Have done many in place firmware updates/upgrade again with no problems.

Hardware is:

GIGABYTE GA-MA790XT-UD4P
Latest BIOS installed
On-board fire wire disabled
On-board audio disabled
8 GB of RAM 4x2GB​

I first tried to perform an in-place firmware upgrade but it failed. I suspect this was due to only having a 2GB boot flash drive. But I did not review any logs to confirm. Okay onto plan “B”. Here I was going to use the fresh install approach with 2 USB flash drives.

1. Backed up the current system configuration – no problems
2. Burn the ISO image to the flash drive (USB A) using the program suggested in the docs – no issues
3. Insert USB A into the my FreeNAS box and boot into the installer – no issues
4. Insert USB B (8 GB Drive) into my FreeNAS box the system sees the drive and the installer loads the 9.3 OS and completes with no errors.
5. Shut down box and remove USB A drive
6. Power up the system and it hangs on the BIOS screen right after it shows the CPU type but before the memory count.
7. Okay so I try all the combinations of 4GB, 8GB, AND 16GB brand and non-brand USB drives for both USA A and USB B. They all work fine as USB A but all hang the same when used as USB B. I also tried moving USB B to all the different USB ports on the box made no difference. And just for kicks I even tried using a USB hard drive the results were the same.
8. I did search the group and tried to read as much as I could for similar problems. One suggestion was to wipe the USB B drive which I did but the results are the same.

Any other suggestions or help


Thanks N7QPP

 

[n7qpp]

Forgot to add went back to the old 2GB boot flash drive the old system is up and running fine

 

[avalon60]

I had a problem with some USB drives I had, and finished up with using a 8GB Sandisk Cruzer Facet. The Corsair and Patriot USB drives I had would not boot up successfully.
Hope you get it sorted.

 

[n7qpp]

A disk is a separate physical hard drive. This will show you how to convert a MBR (Master Boot Record) disk to a GPT (GUID - Globally Unique Identifer) disk in Windows Disk Manager or in a command prompt. By default Windows uses MBR disks.

While all Windows can boot from a MBR disk, you can only boot from a GPT disk if your motherboard has an enabled UEFI BIOS and you have an operating system (Windows 7 or Windows 8) that supports booting to GPT that is installed with UEFI.

You can still have a separate GPT disk as a data disk if your operating system (see below) supports reading a GPT disk, even if your system disk that Windows is installed on is still a MBR disk.

Differences Between MBR and GPT Disks:

• MBR disks are supported (readable) by all Windows operating systems.
  • GPT disks are only supported (readable) by Windows server 2003 SP1 +, XP 64-bit, Vista, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008, Windows 8, and above.
• MBR disks use the standard BIOS partition table.
  • GPT disks use UEFI.
• MBR disks supports up to 2TB per single partition.
  • GPT disks supports up to 256TB per single partition in Windows.
• MBR disks supports up to 4 Primary partitions or 3 Primary partitions and 1 Extended partition with up to 128 logical volumes in the extended partition.
  • GPT disks supports up to 128 Primary partitions.
• Removable disks are MBR disks by default.
  • Removable disks cannot be converted into a GPT disk.

So when the bootable USB drive is created by the installer what type is it MBR or GPT??

 

[danb35]

FreeNAS 9.3 uses GPT formatting for the boot USB. Gigabyte's product info page doesn't mention anything about a UEFI BIOS for that board, which is one strike. It's not designed as a server board, which is a second strike. It's an AMD board, which is a third strike. I can't say whether this board will or won't work with 9.3, but there are some definite red flags.

 

[cyberjock]

I can't say I'm surprised that it's not working for the reasons danb35 has listed.