Error writing to USB in CMD.

[RED_]

Hi all.

Don't know why this is happening but i've downloaded FreeNAS-8.0.1-RELEASE-i386-Full_Install.xz and uncompressed it with 7zip. Formatted the USB (3.72gb) to FAT32 and opened up cmd. Oh yeah i also downloaded physdiskwrite for this part. Anyway in cmd it recognized the disks in my laptop, it then asked me to select one so i selected the USB drive and it came up with the following error:

16384/2000000000 bytes writtenWrite error after 16384.

Someone on the IRC chat told me it could be that my USB was screwed and well.. after a few times of doing this and getting the same error i gave up with the USB.. but when i went to eject it, the USB showed 942mb left. It started off with 3.72gb as mentioned above. Odd but anyway i tried a different USB just now, twice the size and i still got the exact same error with the exact same numbers as above. Only tried it once since im in fear of losing space on my USB like the first time round.

Any help would be appreciated. For what its worth this is the guide im using:

http://forums.freenas.org/showthread.php?251-How-to-write-the-embedded-FreeNAS-8-image-under-Windows

I've followed everything carefully but i still get this error. I'm trying this on Win7 laptop and i do open cmd as the administrator.

Thanks in advance for any help!

EDIT: This has got to be a joke! My second USB is now telling me it only has 942mb left as well! (Didn't use it again). Have i just corrupted two USBS trying to do this?! Argh..

 

[Durkatlon]

My first guess: don't format it, but do exactly the opposite. Use DISKPART to nuke the partition that you created (the FAT32 one). Do the physdiskwrite step with the completely uninitialized stick.

 

[ProtoSD]

Hi Red,

Don't toss out that first USB drive yet. For some reason, some people have trouble writing the image to their USB drives. I've been through this myself and was ready to smash something. I realize the method you are trying saves burning a CD, but I would either suggest that you install from the CD to your flash drive, OR, if you have VMware, download the ISO and set the VMware CD drive to open/boot from the ISO. Make sure your USB drive is plugged in and your VMware system sees it. You can use VMware to install to your USB drive this way too.

I recommend you look at the link I posted in your introduction. The youtube videos are good and there's one for installing from VMware like I mentioned above. You may also need to 'wipe' your flash drive(s) (not format). There's a question in the Unoffical FAQ in my signature below about wiping disks. You'll need a linux or rescue CD with some type of Linux to use the 'dd' command to wipe your flash disks.

Hope that gets you going in the right direction!

 

[RED_]

Cheers for the advice, it seems that this process has partitioned both of my usbs, checked device management. I deleted the partition on one so i now have a USB with 7gb of unallocated space. However it is failed to be format. Therefore can't be used at all.

Never heard of VMware, i have programs such as daemon tools which run ISOs, wonder if that program will allow me to write to USB. I'll look into it.

Going to take a break from this for a bit and then look into it later.

 

[Durkatlon]

You shouldn't have to format the stick. After you blow the partitions away, physdiskwrite should be able to write the image file to it.

 

[RED_]

You shouldn't have to format the stick. After you blow the partitions away, physdiskwrite should be able to write the image file to it.

Cheers mate, its working as i type this. Deleted the partitions and although windows keeps telling me that i need to format the disk to use it i tried it again and its writing to the USB perfectly. Taking ages but that's not a problem.

 

[RED_]

Just something else i need help with..

Is there a way to format the laptop without the original CD? freeNAS starts up fine but its running of the USB at the moment and i want to wipe the entire laptop. No point starting a new thread for this. I've already removed all partitions on the HD so its just this one C: drive now.

Thanks in advance.

 

[ProtoSD]

Were you planning to use the C: for storage for your NAS or to try and install FreeNAS?

 

[RED_]

Thought both were possible since FreeNAS takes up very little space? Ideally though yeah storage. I assume if i want FreeNAS to be installed I would have to create a tiny partition then?

 

[ProtoSD]

This is a very common misconception and very frustrating because people don't understand it and keep asking how to do it. It's explained in the FAQ, maybe I need to update it.

Anyway, FreeNAS isn't intended to be installed on a hard drive, you can do it, but if you do you can't resize the partitions or use the disk for any other purpose. The partition sizes with FreeNAS are fixed and no matter what the size of the disk you install it on, *anything* after 2G is unusable. FreeNAS doesn't just live on 1 partition, it creates/uses 4 partitions, but they are not the standard DOS filesystem type. It's a completely different partition table type than DOS/Window/Linux, so they're not compatible or able to be shared.

So if you want to use your C: for storage, if FreeNAS recognizes the disk, it should wipe it and prepare it with the correct partition UFS/ZFS for you, and then you're stuck with having your USB disk plugged in to boot from. Just the way it is, sorry...

 

[RED_]

Haha, not the end of the world, thanks for the explanation. Ok so, i have it running on USB already so at what stage will it recognize my HD and wipe/partition it for storage? Should it have already done that..? So far all i've done is get myself an IP but i haven't logged into the GUI yet.

 

[ProtoSD]

In the GUI, click on the Storage icon at the top and click Create Volume.

 

[RED_]

Thanks for your help! Really appreciate it.