Issues with USB drive used as storage

[timmyd]

I'm running freeNAS 9.3 on an old i5 laptop, and just using it as a media server.

I've got one internal drive set up to store all my music (and running Firefly to access via iTunes), and I'm trying to add one USB HDD to hold all my video files.

Without getting into why I'm not using a RAID/ZFS/whatever set-up, can you help me getting the USB drive to work? I can add it as a volume, but then the status (in the Storage tab) is always 'unavailable'.

I followed the same process as I did when I added the internal drive as a volume, and that is working perfectly. Am I missing something about using a USB drive?

Thanks!

 

[dlavigne]

FreeNAS does not support (well) using USB drives as storage.

 

[cyberjock]

USB is just not a reliable technology you should rely on for a server. ZFS does not like it when the USB protocol hiccups or sneezes.

Bottom line, stick to USB on flash devices for bootup or don't use it.