fail to start with USB hdd connected

[rwps]

I've isolated an issue I've been having with my machine to the fact that it fails to reliably/successfully start up when a USB hdd is connected.

I never had a problem with the box (HP N36l Microserver) when using freenas 7. Is there something I should be doing in particular to facilitate start up with a USB HDD attached?

 

[joshnerl]

Can you give more details on what you mean by "fails to reliably/successfully start up"? Do you have a monitor attached to see if it's even getting into the boot up procedures or is it just sitting there? Since I've done this myself, I'll ask if maybe the boot priority changed when you connected the usb drive? I lost an hour last week when my board decided to start trying to boot off the hard drives instead of the usb stick. I had disconnected the CD drive i was using thinking everything was stable and the BIOS decided to re-order the boot sequence.

 

[rwps]

No I don't have a monitor attached (wish there was a simple way to use a laptop monitor) as I don't have one in the house. Been many years since I had a PC/box in the house. So failing to start is exhibiting itself in 2 ways:
- can't find the nas on the network (ping or gui)
- when pressing power button on the microserver, instead of a lengthy shutdown process that happens when the box is booted up, it instead shutsdown almost immediately (like there was nothing booted up to be shutdown)

I too wondered about boot sequence. How do I check or change that on a box with no monitor? Or do I need a keyboard & monitor attached?

 

[joshnerl]

To me, if it shuts off that fast when you hit the button, then nothing is actually running - it's like it's waiting for an OS. I'd find some kind of monitor and keyboard to put on there. I've never used those boxes so I'm not sure if they have something like IPMI to monitor them with.