Unable to Boot

[sponitz]

Hello, I have a Dell Power Edge R720 and I'm trying to load UnRaid onto it. I have 4, 4TB HDDs and a 512GB SSD I plan on using for cache. However, I am unable to boot to the flash drive that I have created with my PC. I have rewritten on it many times using the "UnRaid Flasher." I have tried to boot from both BIOS, and reconfiguring the flash drive for UEFI.

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated so I can get this working, thanks!

[ChatNoir]

Hello,

it could be helpful to see if you can boot something else on your server (linux disto, etc) and to know if your flashdrive can be used to boot another computer.

 

You could also try to create the flash drive manually : https://wiki.unraid.net/Articles/Getting_Started#Manual_Method_.28Legacy.29

[Hastor]

8 hours ago, sponitz said:

Hello, I have a Dell Power Edge R720 and I'm trying to load UnRaid onto it. I have 4, 4TB HDDs and a 512GB SSD I plan on using for cache. However, I am unable to boot to the flash drive that I have created with my PC. I have rewritten on it many times using the "UnRaid Flasher." I have tried to boot from both BIOS, and reconfiguring the flash drive for UEFI.

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated so I can get this working, thanks!

Not sure of the similarities - I have a Power Edge T140. I had to check the option for UEFI in the USB creator AND enable UEFI boot somewhere in the bios, as it was off by default. It wouldn't find the USB drive during boot until I did both those things, took me a while to figure out.

 

I'm also booting from a USB 2 port as they recommend, never tried USB 3.

Edited May 18, 2021 by Hastor

[sponitz]

3 hours ago, Hastor said:

Not sure of the similarities - I have a Power Edge T140. I had to check the option for UEFI in the USB creator AND enable UEFI boot somewhere in the bios, as it was off by default. It wouldn't find the USB drive during boot until I did both those things, took me a while to figure out.

 

I'm also booting from a USB 2 port as they recommend, never tried USB 3.

How did you have your volumes setup with the RAID controller? I've read that people recommend to set them as all independent RAID 0 volumes, but I'm not sure.

 

I'm trying to do a manual install again. 

[JonathanM]

3 hours ago, sponitz said:

How did you have your volumes setup with the RAID controller?

RAID controllers are not recommended for multiple reasons.

 

[Hastor]

10 hours ago, sponitz said:

How did you have your volumes setup with the RAID controller? I've read that people recommend to set them as all independent RAID 0 volumes, but I'm not sure.

 

I'm trying to do a manual install again. 

 

6 hours ago, jonathanm said:

RAID controllers are not recommended for multiple reasons.

 

This - in researching before buying my T140 from Dell, I learned this, and requested the HBA330 Non-RAID controller, which has worked great. Unraid wants direct access to the drives without going through other stuff, so it can handle all that. Some RAID controllers may have a non-RAID firmware you can flash (I know mine is available as another model with RAID firmware, though it seems to be a pretty popular one, and the only one I currently have any info on).