USB ports died, can I recover by booting from elsewhere?

[DCM]

Hi there,
I had an old version of FreeNAS running on an old repurposed gamer board for a few years. I believe it was FreeNAS 8.0.3 or 8.0.4 but it was installed in April 2012 so I don't entirely remember. The USB ports on this old board have died, so it's obviously time to replace it with a proper server board. The trouble is I was booting FreeNAS from USB. I have some backups but not as recent as I'd like, so my goal is to get it back to life long enough for a solid backup before replacing. There's no indication that there's any trouble with the data drives (still visible in bios) or the boot drive (still visible on other computers), I have config files saved from the web UI and remember my passwords so I'm somewhat hopeful.

The old board can still boot from PATA drive or from PXE. I don't have any experience with PXE so I've been trying to work the PATA angle. It can boot from SATA too of course, but all those ports are filled by data drives. The data was in raid z2 so, it should be able to withstand losing one drive, but I'd rather not upset things when I could use the PATA port.

I tried to use a Clonezilla live disc to clone the FreeNAS-USB to a PATA drive (in a USB-to-PATA dock) but that seemed to immediately fail. It's possible I had the settings wrong but I have successfully cloned SATA devices before with it, maybe someone here has a better method of cloning USB to USB. It looks like it copied the FreeNAS partition structure but none of the data. The FreeNAS source is 4 GB and the target PATA is 80 GB if that matters, but I thought it would just leave the other 76 GB unallocated.

So the next thing I'm thinking of trying is installing the latest FreeNAS, 9.3 stable, to a PATA drive and booting from there. Is it likely that a freshly installed FreeNAS will be able to recognize my old pool? Should I try to find older version 8 of FreeNAS instead, because it would need to use my older config file to see the pool again? Do I risk corrupting the data if I boot the wrong version of FreeNAS?

Then there is the PXE approach. This might be a stupid question but: Can a PXE server, linked to the network and with my FreeNAS drive connected, just serve up my existing FreeNAS to be booted from? Or does it not work that way.

And what I think is my final option: order my new server board, CPU and RAM, move it into the existing case and reconnect the data drives, and then try to boot from USB again. I don't have faith that this will work, all I can think of is connecting the drives from 0 to 5 in the same order as they are now and hoping for the best. This is what I plan to do eventually anyway, and it would be nice if the data is still there on the other side, but getting a backup before this would be ideal.

Thanks for your insights.

 

[Bidule0hm]

So the next thing I'm thinking of trying is installing the latest FreeNAS, 9.3 stable, to a PATA drive and booting from there.

That's a bad idea. Just reinstall FreeNAS 8.0.x ;)

I don't have faith that this will work, all I can think of is connecting the drives from 0 to 5 in the same order as they are now and hoping for the best.

It'll work, no problem, you don't even need to connect the drives in the same order :)

 

[gpsguy]

As BiduleOhm said, don't even think about trying to jump from 8.0.x to 9.3. If you can get it up and running again on 8.0.x and want to upgrade, to it in minor increments, like 8.0 -> 8.2 -> 8.3.2 -> ... etc. Ensure that your hardware meets the minimum spec's for FreeNAS.

The oldest download you can get from FreeNAS is 8.20, available here: http://download.freenas.org/

I believe I still might have some 8.0.x versions. Let me check my archives.

 

[gpsguy]

Yes, I still have an 8.0.4 x64 ISO that I downloaded in March 2012. Send me a PM if you'd like to have it.

 

[DCM]

OK, thanks for that. I found some mirrors of 8.0.4 release p3 by googling which ought to be compatible (based on the documentation page's release dates I'm pretty sure I was on 8.0.4 release) so don't worry about hosting it. I will give that a go as my next step.

 

[cyberjock]

You should be able to go to 8.2.0 right off the bat (and that's what I would do).

Well, scratch that. If I were you I'd just install 9.3, import the pool and redo the setup how you want it. That is, unless it would take an absurd amount of time to recreate.

 

[DCM]

...install 9.3, import the pool and redo the setup how you want it

Is this likely to work after moving the old data disks to a new motherboard? I'm unfamiliar with how backwards compatible the ZFS versions might be, and if it's auto-magical enough to pick up the pieces from the set of data drives. I've been trying to boot version 8 from the PATA drive but have been stuck on the ROOT MOUNT ERROR, and all I can find about solving that is to try again with a different USB drive in a different USB port, or zeroing the end of the USB drive to erase old partitions. So I'm not sure if I have options left besides changing boards for working USB and hoping the pool can be found again.

alternate thread title: I Have No USB, and I Must Boot

 

[gpsguy]

Yes, typically one can change motherboards and take both the boot drive and the data drives to the new system. The only thing that might need reconfiguring is the NIC, if it changes from say a Realtek to an Intel.