New install boots fine on USB until another USB is added

[Solsearcher]

I have recently completed the FreeNAS install using the two USB drive method. I was up and running quickly thanks to the guides.

The second usb stick, used for the install, was formated and used for storage.

A third usb stick was then added for my 'jails' and Plex was installed.

Everything was sweet, films were added to the storage and Plex was streaming to all rooms.

I then decided to reboot FreeNAS. It never booted back up, I removed all drives and inserted just the boot drive. FreeNAS booted fine. I then added the other two drives (storage and Plex.) the FreeNAS storage read Error, getting available space.

Question 1: Is there a way for FreeNAS to reboot without removing the USB drives?

Question 2: How can I get the drives with their volumes and jail back into FreeNAS. A fair amount of work went into setting it all up.

Thanks in advance for your help.

 

[kdragon75]

The second usb stick, used for the install, was formated and used for storage.

You are gonna have a bad day.

A third usb stick was then added for my 'jails' and Plex was installed.

You bad day just got worse.

Question 1: Is there a way for FreeNAS to reboot without removing the USB drives?

This could just be the way your BIOS is trying to boot from USB. If you plug in a screen, what errors do you see during boot?

Question 2: How can I get the drives with their volumes and jail back into FreeNAS. A fair amount of work went into setting it all up.

Once you solve number one, number two is magic. ZFS is smart enough to keep your disks sorted. As long as you USB drives don't crap out, you can mix them up as much as you want assuming your motherboard is smart enough to pick the right on to boot from.
Basically you want to find the fist port enumerated and use that one for boot.

If your still stuck, provide your EXACT motherboard and bios revision.

Closing thoughts: Never store files you want to be available all the time on USB especially in a NAS. Its one thing to have a USB drive and plug it in and use it every once in a while but and NAS storage they will die much faster and are typically extremely slow. I understand that sometimes we have hardware on hand and limited budgets. I ran FreeNAS for years on old second hand non-ECC RAM and never had an issue but I upgraded as soon as it was practical. Keep this in mind.

 

[Solsearcher]

Sound advice, I really appreciate it.

As you thought, I was using bits of storage lying around. Just to test the FreeNAS environment and not loose any data.

I must admit the whole thing has become a bit of a head spin, following advise from you tube and Google. FreeNAS should be on one USB and Jails on another.

This as you have pointed out caused a problem straight away.

Would your recommend I run the OS and Jails on one USB drive? Or should the boot and jail come from the same Internal Drive?

I will sort out the permanent storage after this initial problem is solved :)

 

[Redcoat]

USB for the boot/OS drive - data storage pool on HDD (or SSD if you are flush) - this is "Internal Drive" in your parlance I guess. You cannot put anything else on the OS drive expect the OS. Please read the manual (linked from the masthead above) - at least the first few sections - to get a feel for how FreeNAS works and what is expected.
Have questions, come here after reading. Search is your friend. Can't find answer, post your question(s). Google and YouTube will work for you once you have the basics down - then you'll be able to filter the gems from the crap.
From one Brit to (I guess) another.

 

[Bidule0hm]

FreeNAS should be on one USB and Jails on another.

The jails should not be on a USB stick. Actually FreeNAS is also far better if on a SSD instead of a USB stick(s).

Please read the hardware recommendations guide: https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?resources/hardware-recommendations-guide.12/

 

[Solsearcher]

Thanks Redcoat, yep a Brit :). Ok for now OS on USB but as above SSD for the future.
Just getting an old drive sorted out now and will format ready for the Microserver.
Will do some research on the best file format to use and use that drive to do some tinkering before adding more HDD's and transferring Family photos and videos.

 

[Redcoat]

Just getting an old drive sorted out now and will format ready for the Microserver.

You don't have a choice of file format with FreeNAS - it's the ZFS file system all the way. If you're only putting one drive in to tinker, again you'll have no choices to make - only when you have more than one drive will you have choices affecting pool redundancy. If you're saving family photo's, think RaidZ2 - read up about it here (in combination with the manual) : https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzHapVfrocfwblFvMVdvQ2ZqTGM/view . It's what is linked from @Bidule0hm 's signature as "Cyberjock's ZFS Guide".

 

[Solsearcher]

Perfect, I was just reading the FreeNAS guide. It explained that the drive will be formatted to ZFS. I was going on to read about the backup options. I'm pleased you posted because now I can just concentrate on RaidZ2, you've saved me a lot of head scratching.

 

[Solsearcher]

Just a quick one.... The HDD I'm going to tinker with is now clear of data I want to keep. It has partitions, will FreeNAS merge the partitions when the disk is prepared for FreeNAS with ZFS?
If not I will download some software to merge the partitions.

 

[Redcoat]

I most cases I know about, FreeNAS prepares used and new HDD's without problems. The exceptions that have been discussed here, IIRC, involve those previously used in systems with "motherboard raid" where some information is embedded in late sectors of the drive - gparted is used to clean those situations up.

 

[wblock]

t has partitions, will FreeNAS merge the partitions when the disk is prepared for FreeNAS with ZFS?

They will be overwritten by FreeNAS native partitioning (GPT).