TrueNAS Core OS install borked all other drives?...

[NAMoulton]

Hey guys! Appreciate any of your time and insight on this issue. I couldn't find anything in the good ole Google...

TLDR; Installed Core on 2nd SSD, but my Win11 OS drive is no longer a bootable drive in BIOS. Please help haha.

For context, I'm in the process of building a new NAS because WD's MyCloud is plain unacceptable nowadays. In my main PC I have a Samsung 1TB 980 Pro (Win11 OS) and a Samsung 256GB 950 Pro (drive TrueNAS Core will be installed on), both installed in a x570 Asus ROG motherboard. I have other drives, but they're just storage or editing drives.

Using a USB, I ran through the Core OS Installer and selected the 256GB 950 Pro drive to be installed onto. Everything went smoothly and seemingly perfectly...until I rebooted my PC and my BIOS could only find the USB with the ISO and the fresh 256GB 950 Pro. My 1TB 980 Pro is now just GONE from the BIOS boot option. I restarted and full power cycled and did everything I could think of short of physcially reseating the 1TB 980 Pro drive.

Has anyone seen this before? I followed the official TrueNAS instructions step by step, so I don't know what went wrong. Any assistance is greatly appreciated! Thank you all so much in advance!!

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

Did you create a storage pool on that 1 TB drive?

 

[NAMoulton]

Did you create a storage pool on that 1 TB drive?

Nope, I followed this set of instructions ( https://www.truenas.com/blog/how-to-install-truenas-core/ ).

Once I got to the list of 11 Options and it showed my IP address, I chose to reboot and that's when my drives went missing.

 

[HoneyBadger]

Hello @NAMoulton

Assuming you only selected the 250GB 950 Pro during the installation, your Windows install should be safe. I'd recommend removing the 250GB SSD with TrueNAS installed on it, and see if that changes things.

What's likely happened is that your motherboard UEFI has lost the path to the Windows 11 bootloader. If you manually specify the boot device, that may allow you to get back into Windows temporarily, and then you can hopefully use the Troubleshooting -> Advanced Options -> Startup Repair menu. Windows should hopefully notice that the "Windows Boot Manager" entry is missing from the EFI entries and recreate it.

 

[NAMoulton]

Hello @NAMoulton

Assuming you only selected the 250GB 950 Pro during the installation, your Windows install should be safe. I'd recommend removing the 250GB SSD with TrueNAS installed on it, and see if that changes things.

What's likely happened is that your motherboard UEFI has lost the path to the Windows 11 bootloader. If you manually specify the boot device, that may allow you to get back into Windows temporarily, and then you can hopefully use the Troubleshooting -> Advanced Options -> Startup Repair menu. Windows should hopefully notice that the "Windows Boot Manager" entry is missing from the EFI entries and recreate it.

Correct, I only selected the 256GB 950 Pro during installation. I'm hoping that when I uninstall the 950 Pro, my BIOS will see my Windows drive again. But I'm waiting on my parts to show up Wednesday before tearing all that apart.

How would I manually specify a boot device that I don't see in my BIOS Boot Menu? All I can think of is just creating a new Windows ISO on a USB and try faux-reinstalling it to jump start it?...or something haha.

 

[HoneyBadger]

Correct, I only selected the 256GB 950 Pro during installation. I'm hoping that when I uninstall the 950 Pro, my BIOS will see my Windows drive again. But I'm waiting on my parts to show up Wednesday before tearing all that apart.

You could remove the 950 Pro and store it safely - with zero active boot devices, your BIOS might kick you to an EFI shell or similar, where you might be able to browse/mount the 980 Pro and launch the .efi for Windows, or it might go "hmm, better check all of these disks to see if anything is valid" and pull a rabbit out of its hat.

How would I manually specify a boot device that I don't see in my BIOS Boot Menu? All I can think of is just creating a new Windows ISO on a USB and try faux-reinstalling it to jump start it?...or something haha.

I believe you can use the same Troubleshooting -> Repair -> Startup Repair workflow through a Win10/Win11 installation ISO booted from USB, assuming you have access to another system to create said USB stick. It's been a while since I had to redo a Windows install though.

 

[NAMoulton]

You could remove the 950 Pro and store it safely - with zero active boot devices, your BIOS might kick you to an EFI shell or similar, where you might be able to browse/mount the 980 Pro and launch the .efi for Windows, or it might go "hmm, better check all of these disks to see if anything is valid" and pull a rabbit out of its hat.


I believe you can use the same Troubleshooting -> Repair -> Startup Repair workflow through a Win10/Win11 installation ISO booted from USB, assuming you have access to another system to create said USB stick. It's been a while since I had to redo a Windows install though.

Yeah, I'll definitely be removing the 950 Pro soon. It's just mounted on the backside of the motherboard. Trying to wait until I transplant it into the new case to avoid double work haha.

For the record, I'm not going to distraught over any data loss on this PC. It's just a gaming rig and all the important stuff is saved on the MyCloud EX2 Ultra. I'd have to install a fresh Win11 and redownload my video games. Not world ending haha.

Appreciate the advice. I'm new to DIY-NAS stuff and this just rattled me last night haha.

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

If you lock your boot method to EFI only the BIOS should eventually drop you into an EFI shell.

Possibly that allows you to cycle through the devices like e.g.

fs0:
dir
fs1:
dir
...
find the Windows drive and invoke the boot loader manually.

 

[NAMoulton]

Sorry the late update. Had a busy week/weekend.

Turns out that during the install of TrueNAS Core onto the 250GB drive did, in fact, wipe my Windows 1TB drive. My BIOS was able to see the drive in the NVME configuration setup, but no OS was attached to the drive. I ended up making the switch to Linux and got both my PC and NAS booted up fine. Just need to do the actual set up for the new system.

Thanks so much for the assistance and advice @Patrick M. Hausen and @HoneyBadger!