Installed OS on NAS drive and now will not boot! Please Help!

[Jfreeman1412]

Okay guys so I could not get my machine to boot off of a USB(tried 3-4 of them) so although I knew it was a waste of space I sacraficed one of my 2tb nas drives to get this machine up and running. Well now that I've added a good number of files to the machine it now says "This is a FreeNAS data disk and cannot boot system" My question is what is the best way to get this up and running again while saving the data that is already on the machine? Thanks in advance and sorry for the NUB situation.

 

[joeschmuck]

Backup your data before going any further.

The reason your system is saying it's FreeNAS data disk is because your computer is trying to boot off of a data drive, not the boot drive. This is fixed in your BIOS.

So you plan to run one drive short all the time? Did you know that you cannot simply add a single hard drive to an existing pool, well it wouldn't be proper at all and if that single drive fails, all data is lost.

It really sounds like you are having an issue installing FreeNAS to a USB Flash drive. How are you booting up the installation media?

 

[Jfreeman1412]

Hey Joe,
Thanks for the reply. Yes I tried installing FreeNAS from one USB to another, however before it ever says complete, where you would click okay the server resets. It only does this when installing on to another usb. It installs fine when I installed it to one of the NAS Drives. I did plan on running a drive short just to get the OS installed which is what I did, however now I don't know if for some reason because the drive I installed the OS to is one of the 12 NAS drives that when after I added a certain amont of data it wanted to use the OS drive or what? It is no where near full.

Backup your data before going any further.

How do I go about this since I can't get the OS to boot?

Thanks again for your help!

 

[joeschmuck]

The easiest way I have found to do this is burn the ISO image to a CD-R and then boot from it and install to the USB drive. (Note: You can do this on any computer, just ensure you select the USB Flash drive for the installation device.) I actually did this yesterday myself to install FreeNAS to a new USB Flash drive for a temporary configuration change for about 1 week. So this means that you will need to connect a CD drive to your machine long enough to build up the USB Flash drive or use any other computer with a CD drive (refer to note above). Once you have done that and the device boots up properly, then you would need to import your current pool and destroy it, then recreate it with all 12 of your hard drives. No matter how you slice it, you need to have your pool configured properly up front, you cannot add a single drive to grow the capacity at a later date. Well you can but as I said before, should that new single drive fail then all your data is gone and I'm not exaggerating about this. Many people have made this mistake and paid the cost of complete data loss.

How do I go about this since I can't get the OS to boot?

You need to use the computers BIOS to select the proper drive to boot from. In your situation since you have 12 drives it may be difficult to know which drive it is so I'd recommend making a bootable USB Flash drive first and then import your pool, then save all your data. Do you need to save the data? You didn't copy it from somewhere and leave the copy on the original device?

I hope this helps.

 

[gpsguy]

It would have been helpful if @Jfreeman1412 had included his hardware information and his other thread - https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/installation-issues-freenas-11.59139/#post-419766

He's already been told that he might not be able to boot from USB on his Isolon/Supermicro X7 server.

It really sounds like you are having an issue installing FreeNAS to a USB Flash drive.

I don't understand what you're saying.

however now I don't know if for some reason because the drive I installed the OS to is one of the 12 NAS drives that when after I added a certain amount of data it wanted to use the OS drive or what?

How are the drives connected to the server? Are they connected to a hardware RAID controller (a no-no with FreeNAS)?

Honestly, given the age of the server, it's use of DDR2 RAM, etc. I'd look at buying something newer, even used on eBay, etc.

 

[Jfreeman1412]

He's already been told that he might not be able to boot from USB on his Isolon/Supermicro X7 server.

I must have missed where this was said.

But anyways,
Thanks for the help. I am definitely not an expert on any of this and am just trying to get this server to work as it is only going to be used as a file server.

How are the drives connected to the server? Are they connected to a hardware RAID controller (a no-no with FreeNAS)?

How would I know? If so is there a way to change them? It has 12 HD bays.

Again I'm not trying to cause any issues here with two threads, I just thought they were two different issues. Thanks again for any help you can offer.

 

[Jfreeman1412]

The easiest way I have found to do this is burn the ISO image to a CD-R and then boot from it and install to the USB drive. (Note: You can do this on any computer, just ensure you select the USB Flash drive for the installation device.) I actually did this yesterday myself to install FreeNAS to a new USB Flash drive for a temporary configuration change for about 1 week. So this means that you will need to connect a CD drive to your machine long enough to build up the USB Flash drive or use any other computer with a CD drive (refer to note above).

I really appreciate this advice. I was able to install it on to a usb on another computer from a cd to a usb drive and it booted up. Now I am working on importing the old volume where I will move the files destroy it and recreate it with all of the drives. Is there a certain way that I would destroy it, or is it as simple as making a new one and it will format over the old one? Again sorry for the lack of knowledge and thank you for sharing some of yours!