Question that may seem ridiculous

[Sarge101st]

Okay. I don't feel that I'm a noob here but I'm completely at a loss here. I've installed FreeNAS on a portable USB flash drive. I've set it up and already got things going as a data server. Now I want to reboot my machine and go back into windows 7 but I can't. If I remove all external devices and report I get the "This is a FreeNAS datadisk and cannot boot system. system halted," error. I've even gone into the BIOS and reordered the boot priority for the internal HDD first. Nothing works. I even tried running the laptops original system recovery disks on the external cd drive in hopes that would get things going. How do I get the machine to boot into Windows 7 again?

 

[travalon]

im a noob too. as i understand it when you add discs to a volume, freenas ERASES THEM... If you added your boot disk to the volume it may be m-t. if so reinstall windoze.

 

[interpeix]

I'm agree with @travalon. You could make a simple test, start with W7 cd or any other rescue cd and try to mount your boot disk. If you can, try to rescue your W7 installation. For future tests, I recomend you, use a Virtual Machine. Good luck.

 

[Stephens]

I hope I'm reading you wrong but it sounds like you overwrote your Windows boot hard drive when you created a pool in FreeNAS.

 

[cyberjock]

I think that's exactly what he did unfortunately...

 

[Sarge101st]

Yep. That's exactly what I did. Reinstalled windows and started over on the machine. Gotta new question that I'm sure is in the forums that I'll sift through for an answer but if anyone catches this and can quick reply it would be great. Trying to format the external drive I used with freenas and start over. I can't initialize or do anything with it in Windows 7. Is there a way to format and start over? Maybe through command prompt? I don't have any vital data on it that wasn't backed up on another drive so I don't care what it loses. Thanks.

 

[JaimieV]

Trying to format the external drive I used with freenas and start over. I can't initialize or do anything with it in Windows 7. Is there a way to format and start over?

Windows rather hides this from you...
1. Log in as an Administrator user
2. Click on the Start button and then choose Control Panel.
3a. If you're viewing the Large icons or Small icons view of Control Panel, click on the Administrative Tools icon
3b. If not, click on the System and Security link, then click on the Administrative Tools heading located near the bottom of the window
4. In the Administrative Tools window, double-click on the Computer Management icon.
5. When Computer Management opens, click on Disk Management on the left side of the window, located under Storage.
6. Disk Management should now appear on the right side of the Computer Management window.
7. You can now pick your external disk, and delete all the FreeNAS-created partitions.

Thanks, Microsoft....
(alternative sneaky route: Open Windows Explorer, right click on My Computer, choose Manage, takes you to step 5 above)