U7 Freenas ISO bricks USB keys when burnt on Windows w/Rufus ?

[AlcSi]

Hi, just wanted to know if anybody else had this issue.

I tried burning the latest iso on one USB key and the USB was then not recognized by Windows.
Tried a second time, with another USB key (Rufus would consistently exit with errors with the first USB key). The second was an other brand, and... same exact result.

They are now seen as empty, unformatted storages, Windows can't format them (sees around 14ko of space to format, and proceeds to exit with errors).
Rufus can't burn even another ISO on either of them, they seem to be completely bricked.

Note that on the same computer, with the same Rufus executable, I burnt a Windows iso, afterwards, just to see... It worked (on a third stick).
Also note that I tried to use balenaEtcher too... without success.

Very strange, not really saying it's FreeNAS's iso's fault, but I wanted to let you know, in case other users report similar things.

 

[strelok]

Hi,
I faced with the same problem. I tried burning iso (11.2-U7) on two different USB keys. After that sometimes Windows crashed with "blue window" when I insert this usb flash in my PC and Windows doesn't see it as usual USB disk. Moreover I can't boot on my MicroServer Gen8 from this usb flash. So, I'm still trying to find out any way to install latest release FreeNAS.

 

[AlcSi]

In the end, in my case, the first two USB's were indeed corrupt (but not bricked, I managed to reformat them with GParted).
A third one had almost the same symptoms but turned out being functional for a fresh install... I really don't know what happened.

 

[jlpellet]

Ever since FreeBSD moved from GRUB for the boot manager (as I recall, circa 11.2+), I've had problems creating a boot USB. One issue, AFAIK, still, is that FreeBSD uses a nonstandard GPT layout & 32-bit OS don't like it, hence the Windoes BSD. Even when I create an install image on Linux, ChromeOS, or MacOS, I still have a problem with the resulting USB drive not booting properly. I keep a USB image at 11.2 Release, install from it, then update to the latest release, rather than continually fight with later releases' ISOs. Hope this helps.
John

 

[pschatz100]

This is not a new phenomenon, and I don't think the flash drives are actually bricked. When you create the FreeNAS installer, a disk partition is created on the flash drive that is not compatible with Windows. After you are finished with your FreeNAS install, you should be able to use a disk utility to remove the partition. Then, you could create a new Windows compatible partition using tools appropriate for that and be good to go.