Hi All,

 

I am new to unraid and built my server just now. I am having problems booting to USB to even get the thing running! I have tried turning everything on and off in the BIOS relating to the USB. I have tried four different USB sticks as well, not sure what I am doing wrong. Thanks.

 

Here is my setup:

MB - Biostar A780L3G

CPU - Athlon II X2 250

RAM - Crucial 2GB DD3-1066

PSU - Corsair CX430

I would go back to the beginning and re-load those sticks. It doesn't sound like they were  setup as bootable.  

 

Make sure to plug the USB into the motherboard, not the case connector. It might not be connected, and if it is, it could be off by a pin where it's plugged into the MB header.

 

In the BIOS, "Removable" should be the first boot device. I don't remember if even shows "USB" or not. While you're in the BIOS, I would also disable the Bootup flash screen. The next time you boot you'll be at least able to see that the processor and memory are being seen correctly.

 

Long time lurker, first time poster.

I can verify that your hardware will run unRAID easily. I built a small server last week with the identical parts and have not had any issues with it.

 

 

 

 

Thanks for the reply EchoL.

 

I am following the readme instructions to create the flash drive. I tried all four from Win7 and XP machine.  However, I will go back and try some more. I know I changed a lot of settings on the BIOS to how the USB will behave, tried to have it emulate FDD, HDD, and CDROM.

 

Do you remember if you made many changes like that? I know I put the USB device as first to load and I even pressed F9 on boot up so I could manually select which device to boot from.

Worst case rebuild a stick and try it in another machine. I wont do anything other than boot up and tell you your drives need clearing, which I WOULD NOT do by the way.

 

Here is some recommended BIOS settings for my BioStar board. Of course yours is different, but this worked perfectly for me.

http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=Hardware_Compatibility#First_Time_Configuration

 

 

You don't need to mess around in the bios for this board work. If you've made other changes, you should reset back to factory settings before doing anything else. The only things I touched were boot sequence, system clock, and disable boot logo screen.

Thanks for both suggestions. I didn't think about trying the unraid stick on another computer to verify. I will have to do this today. I will let you know how it turns out.

I just don't get it now. I tried the same unraid usb on my desktop computer and it booted up fine. On the server I just built, I have tried all the different usb ports but I know they are good because I am using a usb keyboard to configure the BIOS.

 

I tried all different combinations of the BIOS settings and still had no luck. I know the unraid usb works fine, usb ports work fine. EchoL has the same exact setup and it works.

 

After looking through the BIOS settings again and looking over the video settings that I made changes to, I decided to change the monitors that I was using. The first monitor was using a VGA cable and the second a DVI. After changing from VGA to DVI, the boot up screen came up. For some reason it seems that the VGA monitor would only show the BIOS and startup and nothing after that.

I just don't get it now. I tried the same unraid usb on my desktop computer and it booted up fine. On the server I just built, I have tried all the different usb ports but I know they are good because I am using a usb keyboard to configure the BIOS.

 

I tried all different combinations of the BIOS settings and still had no luck. I know the unraid usb works fine, usb ports work fine. EchoL has the same exact setup and it works. Could it possibly be bad MB?

 

Search the unRAID wiki for some discussion on setting up the USB drives in different ways.  There is an HP formatter tool that may help you in this situation.

I just don't get it now. I tried the same unraid usb on my desktop computer and it booted up fine. On the server I just built, I have tried all the different usb ports but I know they are good because I am using a usb keyboard to configure the BIOS.

 

I tried all different combinations of the BIOS settings and still had no luck. I know the unraid usb works fine, usb ports work fine. EchoL has the same exact setup and it works. Could it possibly be bad MB?

 

Search the unRAID wiki for some discussion on setting up the USB drives in different ways.  There is an HP formatter tool that may help you in this situation.

 

I don't think I have to do that. For some reason the MB prefers a DVI connection over a VGA connection.

Hi All,

 

I am new to unraid and built my server just now. I am having problems booting to USB to even get the thing running! I have tried turning everything on and off in the BIOS relating to the USB. I have tried four different USB sticks as well, not sure what I am doing wrong. Thanks.

 

Here is my setup:

MB - Biostar A780L3G

CPU - Athlon II X2 250

RAM - Crucial 2GB DD3-1066

PSU - Corsair CX430

 

 

Hello,

 

I know this is an old thread, but I wanted to reply to it to report a potential solution.  Having recently acquired the same motherboard (Biostar A780L3G), there is a BIOS setting that needs to be adjusted.

 

Go to the USB Configuration option and, under emulation, select Hard Disk Drive (HDD).

 

Then go to the boot order and, under HDD, select the USB drive that is attached.

 

For good measure, you should enable the Advanced Host Controller interface (AHCI) option for the SATA drives as well.  It appears to work with unRaid.

 

Hope this helps!