Transfer Freenas from hard drive to USB drive

[sonny81]

Just realized the reason I couldn't get my computer to boot from USB drive when I first installed freenas is because of this U3 launch software.

I've successfully taken it off the usb drive but have spent about two week adjusting and troubleshooting my freenas profile that I have installed on an old hard drive. I would like to install the OS on the usb drive but keep all my current configuration settings I have on the hard drive.

Is this possible?

 

[winstontj]

you can just back up and restore. it works fine.

On the Settings > General tab at the bottom you will see the "Save Config" and "Upload Config" buttons. Just go into the old one (on the HDD) and save that config file. Build a new/fresh version of FreeNAS and then when you log into the initial web GUI just hit Upload Config and it'll put your settings into the new OS. Just don't delete the old one off the HDD until you confirm your settings transferred.

 

[sonny81]

you can just back up and restore. it works fine.

On the Settings > General tab at the bottom you will see the "Save Config" and "Upload Config" buttons. Just go into the old one (on the HDD) and save that config file. Build a new/fresh version of FreeNAS and then when you log into the initial web GUI just hit Upload Config and it'll put your settings into the new OS. Just don't delete the old one off the HDD until you confirm your settings transferred.

Nice buddy thanks for the detailed response!! Greatly appreciated!

 

[sonny81]

Nice buddy thanks for the detailed response!! Greatly appreciated!

Shouldn't really be too surprised here, but this is an extremely simple task and it keeps giving me a message during the Freenas boot process "upload failed" or something to that extent.

I manually reboot and get stuck on the Boot: F1 script at the very beginning of Freenas booting. I have tried wired and wireless devices,firefox, chrome, safari, and IE....same message.

About 15 reformat/reinstalls/reuploads with the exact same result.

 

[nismohks]

Shouldn't really be too surprised here, but this is an extremely simple task and it keeps giving me a message during the Freenas boot process "upload failed" or something to that extent.

I manually reboot and get stuck on the Boot: F1 script at the very beginning of Freenas booting. I have tried wired and wireless devices,firefox, chrome, safari, and IE....same message.

About 15 reformat/reinstalls/reuploads with the exact same result.

sometimes i get a similar thing with you where freenas wont boot off the USB drive and get stuck at F1 or loader.conf

normally i just try another usb drive and it often works, but i understand your frustration! i doo have tried reinstalling/upgrading to the same usb drive before to no avail.

try another spare usb you may have kicking around ;)

 

[sonny81]

sometimes i get a similar thing with you where freenas wont boot off the USB drive and get stuck at F1 or loader.conf

normally i just try another usb drive and it often works, but i understand your frustration! i doo have tried reinstalling/upgrading to the same usb drive before to no avail.

try another spare usb you may have kicking around ;)

That would make sense as I had to uninstall that crappy Sandisk U3 software.

I've since given up on trying temporarily but I'm wondering...could I test out your theory with a Compact Flash Card and a USB card reader? I assume it will all be the same but best if I ask before wasting time :)

Thanks man!!

 

[reebzor]

you can just back up and restore. it works fine.

I didn't want to create a new thread because this is exactly what I want to do.

I had to install a 3rd party driver and configure it for my RAID card, will backing up and restoring with this process still work for me?

I'm really hesitant to do this because it was a PITA to get working, but I would like to free up this SATA port my hard drive is taking up and move FreeNAS to a USB drive. Thanks

 

[ben]

reebzor, you should be able to use the same backup and restore for the config as with vanilla freeNAS, but updating may be harder for you if you're running a custom installation of FreeNAS. You'll probably have to do that backup and restore EVERY time as you make new versions.

 

[reebzor]

Ok, I will try it this weekend and post back with results. Thanks!


UPDATE: Reinstalled to the USB drive and restored from a backup. Everything worked fine except I can't get the the web interface of my RAID card. No big deal, I assumed I would have to reinstall that anyway. Thanks!