System won't boot - Boot drive recoverable?

[Fish]

Over the weekend, my FreeNAS build became unplugged. (Roommates couldn't figure out that there are 2 sides of outlets on a UPS) When I tried to boot it up, I got a message: "This is a NAS data disk and cannot boot system"

After some research, I found this to mean that the boot drive is the fault. I attempted to boot from it through the BIOS, but it just gets to a blinking period. This is a Verbatim USB3.0 flash drive that I probably shouldn't have used, but did because I'm still just testing FreeNAS without any real data.

So my questions are these:
1.) Is there a way to get my configuration from the flash drive? (i.e. static ip, jail settings, scrub schedule, etc.)
2.) What would be a better option for a boot drive? I have a few brand new 500GB 2.5" HGST drives that I could put in RAID 1 to avoid a fault next time.
3.) I'm also going to be upgrading the motherboard soon. Will the boot drive fuss at all when that happens?

Thanks!

 

[Darren Myers]

I use 2 80Gb Intel SSD's in mirror for FreeNAS boot, if the flash drive truly is hosed then i dont think theres a way to get your config off it....you'd need to start fresh and import your pools. Updating the motherboard shouldnt make it fuss at all, unless of course it has a reltek nic or some garbage like sound and all that fancy shit FreeNAS doesnt play nicely with/or anything thats not recommended by the fine ppl here at FreeNAS. If you dont do a 2 drive mirror next time, backup the config somewhere else, or multiple places lol

 

[Bidule0hm]

Search for "recover config" IIRC you find one or two useful threads easily ;)

I'd say even if you mirror the boot drive you still should do a backup of the config, there's no excuses to not do it.

 

[Fish]

Will I run into any problems down the road if I do a HW RAID 1 on the boot drives using an X10 motherboard?

 

[Darren Myers]

everything i have read says yes HW raid will give you problems for the boot, as when you mirror it does ZFS on the boot drive as well.

 

[Fish]

everything i have read says yes HW raid will give you problems for the boot, as when you mirror it does ZFS on the boot drive as well.

So what's the best way to do a redundant boot drive?

 

[Darren Myers]

mirroring, when installing select both boot devices and youre done. whether its 2 USB's or 2 SATA's

 

[Fish]

mirroring, when installing select both boot devices and youre done. whether its 2 USB's or 2 SATA's

So you're saying that during the installation process of freenas, I can choose multiple drives?

 

[Darren Myers]

when installing 9.3 yes, i did it on my install i selected both my 80Gb intel ssd's

 

[danb35]

See http://doc.freenas.org/9.3/freenas_install.html#performing-the-installation:

Use your arrow keys to highlight the USB, compact flash device, or virtual disk to install into and press the spacebar to select it. If you wish to mirror the boot device, arrow to the second device and press spacebar to select it as well.

 

[Ericloewe]

So you're saying that during the installation process of freenas, I can choose multiple drives?

Yes, the install process is designed to hint at that possibility, since you have to actively mark devices.

 

[Fish]

See http://doc.freenas.org/9.3/freenas_install.html#performing-the-installation:

Thanks, this is exactly what I was looking for. Wasn't looking hard enough I gues.