Boot flash device not recognised

[Ian Bennett]

Must be something simple with this one, but can't see what! I've set up quite a few FreeNAS 9 systems and find 16GB Sandisk Cruiser USB2 units perfect as a boot device. However, I'm setting up a temp FreeNAS for some SMB shares on a little Acer Revo 70 SFF pc - I know, it's not ideal as a NAS unit, but it's only temporary.

Anyway, the problem in a nutshell is that everything works fine, but with a wierd issue. The only way to boot from the Sandisk flash drive is to remove it, insert another bootable flash drive - in this case another 16GB Cruiser with Windows Server 2016 install image - boot up the Revo and hit F12 to get to the bootable device screen. The Server2016 Cruiser shows up as a boot device and I then swap it for the FreeNAS Cruiser and hit return - FreeNAS then boots up fine and I can access my configured SMB shares . The problem is that I'm back to square one if I need to restart.

Anyone know why the Server2016 Cruiser boots fine, but the FreeNAS Cruiser does NOT appear as a boot device, even although it clearly is when I use the swap trick described above.

I build several FreeNAS systems in exactly the same way using Dell server hardware and have never had this issue so perhaps it's something to do with the Acer Revo BIOS.

 

[dlavigne]

It does sound like a BIOS issue. Have you found a setting that fixes it?

 

[DrKK]

I agree with Dru. I'm thinking some option in the BIOS vis-a-vis the USB stuff. If you're trying a USB3 port, try a USB2 port, for example. See if that helps.