FreeNAS won't mount...

[Methodd]

Greetings folks,
This is my first time posting here and any help would be much appreciated.
I'll make this as short as possible.
I built a dedicated FreeNAS box two years ago and it has been running pretty much 24/7 since May of 2013 without a problem. Suddenly last week while I was out of town it stopped sharing files. I rebooted and got this (screen pic):

System Specs:
MoBo: Supermicro X9SCL-F-0
RAM: 2x4GB Kingston DD3-1600 ECC
CPU: Core i3 2100
HDD: 6x3TB Western Digital Red (RAID-Z2)
USB: 8GB USB2.0 (OS Drive)
FreeNAS: 8.3.1 RC1 x64
Hard drives are connected directly to the motherboard's onboard SATA ports.
All of the hard drives are detected in the BIOS.


Thanks in advance

 

[danb35]

Looks like your boot device died. Do a clean install to a new flash drive, upload the config file that you hopefully downloaded when you set up the server, and you should be good to go.

 

[Methodd]

What if I don't have the config file?

 

[danb35]

Depending on just how fried your USB drive is, you may be able to recover the config file from it. If you search the forum you should be able to find some instructions (can't easily do it myself on my tablet). Worst case, you may need to recreate your users and shares if you can't recover the file. Your data is still safe.

 

[DrKK]

Also, OP, while you're at it, it would be nice if you got with 2015 and upgraded your NAS to the vastly superior 9.x series, preferably 9.3 latest.

The procedure should be:

* Get new boot device (actually, two would be good, because 9.3 can mirror your boot devices)
* Install the same version of 8.whatever you had (you can find it in the downloads area---we'll help you if you can't find it)
* Get everything back up and running, with your old config file if you can.
* Perform the upgrading steps to bring yourself current.

There is little danger in attempting the upgrade, as it should not impact your existing data.

 

[Ericloewe]

More RAM wouldn't hurt, either.

 

[Methodd]

Thanks for the replies. I went out and got two identical 16GB USB flash drives and installed 9.3 on one of them. I imported the volume and setup everything else. Things are working great now so thank you everyone for your input. I had been meaning to upgrade to the latest release but haven't been very motivated to do so until now since it's always worked flawless. As I mentioned I bought two identical USB drives so I could mirror my boot drive. When I go to System > Boot > Status click on freenas-boot > Attach I get a popup Member disk: with only one option in the drop down da1 (15.6 GB) so I click Attach and get "Error: Failed to attach disk: cannot attach da1p2 to da0p2: device is too small"

 

[DrKK]

Typically, that means that the device you've added does not have the same size as the device already existing. Now, you said, the devices were identical, but this error would not be occurring in that case.

So I am confused.

 

[SweetAndLow]

I wonder of the USB stick came pre-formated and has random partitions on it and FreeNAS isn't seeing the entire space available. Try wiping out the USB stick and leave it unformated then try adding it back in.

 

[danb35]

As DrKK said, that usually means that the second device (the one you're trying to add as a mirror) is smaller than the first, even if only by one block. Best solution is to install to both, which will create the mirror at install time. Second option would be to do a clean install to the second device, then add the first as a mirror.