Can´t see SD-card during install

[Mickey Rasmussen]

Hello

I´m trying to install FreeNas, on an old laptop. I´m currently booting the installation from an USB, and In the card reader I have an 8 gb SD-card. However, I can´t see the SD-card in the menu?

I tried formatting it as Fat32, NTFS, and even deleting the partition.

I can see the SD card in the boot menu, and in XBMC, which is installed on the main disk (Which will be replaced)

 

[danb35]

FreeNAS is not intended to run on castoff old hardware, nor to run from an SD card.

 

[Mickey Rasmussen]

FreeNAS is not intended to run on castoff old hardware, nor to run from an SD card.

Okay, it´s not that old. A couple of years or so.. (DDR3, SATA etc.)

An due to this, found on freenas website, i really dont understand your msg?

1.4.3 Compact or USB Flash
The FreeNAS® operating system is a running image. This means that it should not be installed onto a hard drive, but rather to a USB or compact flash device that is at least 2 GB in size. If you don't have compact flash, you can instead use a USB thumb drive that is dedicated to the running image and which stays inserted in the USB slot. While technically you can install FreeNAS® onto a hard drive, this is discouraged as you will lose the storage capacity of the drive. In other words, the operating system will take over the drive and will not allow you to store data on it, regardless of the size of the drive.
The FreeNAS® installation will partition the operating system drive into two ~1 GB partitions. One partition holds the current operating system and the other partition is used when you upgrade. This allows you to safely upgrade to a new image or to revert to an older image should you encounter problems.

 

[DrKK]

First of all, an SD card is not "compact flash". Compact flash is (or maybe, was, since it's falling out of fashion) a specific type of NAND flash device that featured much higher speeds than typical SD cards. I don't think installing to SD/SDHC/whatever cards is particularly recommended. Those are extremely low reliability devices, typically, and poorly performing devices, typically.

Second of all, what you're reading is out of date. The installation no longer partitions the operating system drive into two 1GB partitions. Rather, the boot device is now a live, ZFS pool, potentially mirrored. Which is quite a different story. Are you reading out-of-date docs for pre-9.3 FreeNAS?

Third of all, whatever your card reader is, it may not be compatible with the device drivers in FreeBSD. I saw one guy with a card reader a couple days ago, and it seemed to be recognized by FreeBSD, so I am not sure if this is an issue or not. I am sure the guys in the FreeBSD forums or #freebsd irc channel on freenode can give you some insight there.

 

[DrKK]

This is compact flash: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA7252TH7094

 

[dlavigne]

An due to this, found on freenas website, i really dont understand your msg?

Which URL is this from? (so it can be corrected)

 

[Ericloewe]

Part of what makes CF viable and SD not is that CF is a glorified ATA interface, while SD was never really designed for this kind of thing.

 

[cyberjock]

If you read my hardware recommendations thread I specifically call out SD-cards as NOT acceptable for installing FreeNAS on for a bunch of reasons.. including this thread's reason. I suggest you search out our stickied posts and read those before continuing.