Hi team, I've done a bit of reading and just want to poll the collective wisdom before moving forward:
My existing FreeNAS system (latest stable) worked fine for years with dual boot USB sticks.
After a graceful automated UPS shutdown due to a power failure, I appear to have suffered both of my mirrored FreeNAS USB stick boot drives failing at the same time. The boot order is correct in the BIOS (initially I did get "This is a FreeNAS data disk and can not boot system..." etc, but I disabled the data disks from the boot order and physically disconnected them too). But regardless of which USB stick I select, I still get "Reboot and Select proper Boot device or Insert Boot Media in selected Boot device and press a key" from the BIOS.
I've swapped the USB ports, tried a third port, swapped both sticks, changed their boot order, tried with 1 stick (each) in different ports. All no good.
My assumption is it was a double failure (maybe one failed some time ago and I never noticed?) and not a USB port/bus fault, because the keyboard still works.
My questions are:
1. does my assumption of a double failure seem correct? If not, do you have a suggestion?
2. what is the best way to recover from a boot device failure? My only requirement is to protect the integrity of the HDD data.
My plan was to buy a third USB stick and do a clean install, then once the system was up with the HDD pool, I'd locate the config backup (I can't recall placing it) and restore it, or just rebuild everything from scratch. But how does this go with the existing data tanks on the HDDs? Does the act of booting a clean install put the tanks at risk?
Is there a better plan? Do you have any warnings? My main priority is preservation of the NAS storage data. Losing the NAS config is an inconvenience, but surmountable.
Thanks in advance,
Ent.
My existing FreeNAS system (latest stable) worked fine for years with dual boot USB sticks.
After a graceful automated UPS shutdown due to a power failure, I appear to have suffered both of my mirrored FreeNAS USB stick boot drives failing at the same time. The boot order is correct in the BIOS (initially I did get "This is a FreeNAS data disk and can not boot system..." etc, but I disabled the data disks from the boot order and physically disconnected them too). But regardless of which USB stick I select, I still get "Reboot and Select proper Boot device or Insert Boot Media in selected Boot device and press a key" from the BIOS.
I've swapped the USB ports, tried a third port, swapped both sticks, changed their boot order, tried with 1 stick (each) in different ports. All no good.
My assumption is it was a double failure (maybe one failed some time ago and I never noticed?) and not a USB port/bus fault, because the keyboard still works.
My questions are:
1. does my assumption of a double failure seem correct? If not, do you have a suggestion?
2. what is the best way to recover from a boot device failure? My only requirement is to protect the integrity of the HDD data.
My plan was to buy a third USB stick and do a clean install, then once the system was up with the HDD pool, I'd locate the config backup (I can't recall placing it) and restore it, or just rebuild everything from scratch. But how does this go with the existing data tanks on the HDDs? Does the act of booting a clean install put the tanks at risk?
Is there a better plan? Do you have any warnings? My main priority is preservation of the NAS storage data. Losing the NAS config is an inconvenience, but surmountable.
Thanks in advance,
Ent.
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