Trying to install new Freenas on prevous working install that died (Mayday!, mayday!...)

[M_H]

Came into my office today with the UPS screaming and my FreeNAS box off. I tried to turn on the FreeNAS box and it just gets as far as the "asterix' dancing in the upper left of the black screen and eventually stops.

I've plugged in a new USB drive and tried to install a new install of FreNAS onto it and it gets just as far. The install program/USB works just fine, but as soon as I get to 'pull the install media and reboot' I get the rotating 'asterix' and then nothing.

Any ideas what could be going wrong?

When I pull the USB drive with the FreeNAS OS on it and plug it into my Windows box, it doesn't register even as a drive. Is that normal?

What are my options for getting the data off those drives? I've been looking for a link and can't seem to find anything that will help me connect existing FreeNAS storage drives to a new FreeNAS install.

Lenovo Thinkstation S20

 

[M_H]

Machine was just updated to 11.02 a few weeks ago, so it was running current version. And, I did run the drive format (?) that the update recommended.
I'm trying to get to a windows share on the FreeNAS box.

 

[M_H]

Just pulled the new USB FreeNAS install and plugged it into an HP box I had kicking around. It boots up. Or, at least it is the process and getting a lot further than the Lenovo box did.
Can I just pull the storage drives and the original FreeNAS USB, plug them into the HP box and get that to run and re-access the existing storage on the drives?

 

[JohnDigital]

You can do the freenas install on any 64bit machine then move the USB drive to the old server and boot, upload config and should be all good. If it does the same thing id test the hardware in the old server.

 

[M_H]

I think my old Lenovo box is bad. It won't boot a FreeNAS USB anymore.

I found this:
https://www.ixsystems.com/community/resources/moving-freenas-to-new-hardware.89/ <- Claims you just plug it all into a new box and 'tada'!....
and moved the USB and 2 Storage Drives to the HP box and started it up. It took forever to boot and ends up at a Console Setup screen. 'Web interface could be accessed.' So, it didn't remember the network settings, and I don't know what else...

Not sure if I should be starting with the old FreeNAS USB or a fresh FreeNAS USB to try to reclaim my data.

 

[M_H]

I found these instructions:

3. Booting — FreeNAS®11.2-U6 User Guide Table of Contents

www.ixsystems.com

Reset my network address on the box and I can now access my network drive. ...More than mild relief.

 

[JohnDigital]

Ive had machines do this similar thing with bad ram. Or crash in the middle of a boot. Id run memtest for a day or two on that Lenovo machine and see what it says.

Dont forget to make config backups frequently (with changes).

 

[JohnDigital]

Sometimes with different brands of network cards the network needs be reconfigured.. Ive run into that in the past with pfSense

 

[M_H]

I was suspecting memory as well. I reboot the thing pulling one stick at a time and that didn't make any difference.

Thanks for the -make config backups- advice. I'm still noob to this whole FreeNAS world. I had a box up for more than a year or two, but it was just a prove that it works - kind of thing. I've only had one in actual use for less than a month.

I'm the admin in a school and we don't have a shortage on old hardware, so building a NAS was easy and I can build more boxes. In a case like this, I wish I had a proper second system to just turn on instead of fighting a whole day to get the system back up.
How can I build a second FreeNAS box and have it mirror (?) so that if one goes down, I can just change the IP (or whatever it takes) on the second one and have it up and running?
I'd also really like to have a backup that is disconnected or at least inaccesable from any kind of ransom-ware. What would be the best way to set that up?

 

[JohnDigital]

You can move your drives to new machine, restore config and go.

You are pretty well covered on ransomware with recursive snapshots, you really can't have too many if your data isn't changing a lot. I have one go every day and keep for a week or so.