the freenas image is making thumb drive into unallocated space

[Biotoxin]

i downloaded the newest stable 32 bit release image to install on thumb drive. and have used win32diskimager and rufus both times it turns the space of the image into unallocated space on the drive. i dont know what it is doing can the image partition drive to a different format than fat32? should i try ntsc ? ive never seen a bootable usb turn into unallocated space. would appreciate it if i could get some help...

 

[dlavigne]

What are you trying to accomplish? If you are trying to install FreeNAS, the thumb drive is meant to hold the operating system and not be used for storage.

 

[Biotoxin]

i know but it wont boot if the is nothing there to boot from....every bootable flashdrive ive made has files on it... and in fat 32... that or im not sure how to boot it

 

[Biotoxin]

i guess the question is how do i boot it if it wont boot ... when the usb is on the top of the boot order
i just figured an error or a bad file had occured

 

[Biotoxin]

i dont know why it would matter but, could my external hard drives cause it not to boot.... or take forever because it seaching through the hard drives for bootable data?

 

[Biotoxin]

What are you trying to accomplish? If you are trying to install FreeNAS, the thumb drive is meant to hold the operating system and not be used for storage.

im sorry i didnt reply to your post hopefully this will give you a alert back to this post

 

[dlavigne]

It's still unclear what your problem is. Does the thumb drive boot? If not, use a tool like dban to empty the stick, then reburn the img to the stick using win32diskimager. Windows isn't very smart when it comes to burning sticks that contain non-Windows filesystems.

Also, if you're using 32-bit, is it because the hardware doesn't support 64-bit? If so, you may be hititng a hardware issue as 32-bit hardware is EOL for FreeNAS and most 32-bit hardware is ill suited to FreeNAS in the first place.

 

[Knowltey]

That is normal behaviour. You're burning the bootable ISO in Windows, however Windows does not recognize the file system being used so it is just reported in Windows as "unallocated space"

When I burn my sticks with win32diskimager they also show up to Windows as unallocated. It's simply that Windows can't tell what is in that space.

Have you actually attempted to boot from the USB stick yet?

Also, you should be using 64-bit and hardware that supports it. If your issue is that your hardware isn't 64-bit compatible you're going to have a lot of major issues down the road.