Hello, I am trying to get unraid to boot more smoothly. I don't have issues with it running but if the system needs to restart it will not restart unless I move the flash drive to a different port each time. It seems weird but I can move it back and fourth between two ports each time it boots and have no problems, but if the drive is not moved Unraid simply will not boot up. Looking for suggestions on how to fix this problem. The system is running a MSI690 with a I9-12900k 64GB RAM, Nvidia 3070TI and many storage drives.

I can't recall exactly but I think in my case it also happened if I completely powered down the server, the only way to make the USB drive boot again was to change it to another port, let's see what @Austin Detzel says. I also recall that it was not a problem related to Unraid or its booting drive. To isolate the problem I tried with other booting systems (Ubuntu and PassMark's Memtest) and I had the same problem, they would boot fine the first time but they would refuse to boot again unless I changed the USB drive to another port. By the way, this seems to be a known issue: I vaguely remember something about Fast Boot so I would recommend @Austin Detzelto test the following (in order): 1. Disable "Fast Boot" and try again 2. If that doesn't work, in "Settings > Advanced > USB Configuration" set "XHCI Hand-off" to "Disabled" and "Legacy USB Support" to "Auto" and try again 3. If it still doesn't work, try to tweak the booting options to enable UEFI booting/Secure Boot and be sure that you're booting the Unraid USB drive in UEFI mode (rename "EFI-" folder to "EFI"). I can't restart my server right now because I'm rebuilding Parity but if you still have problems let me know and I will check what my settings are in the BIOS so you can compare and see if copying them solves your problem.

Unraid Will Not Boot Unless USB Flash Drive is Moved to a Different Port

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February 7, 20233 yr

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October 19, 2025Oct 19

I was going through the same issue, and tried to disable fastboot, enable/disable xhce handoff, enable/disable legacy USB support, etc. Nothing to prevent my USB boot drive to sometimes unrecognised from the BIOS, or booted to unraid just to then having errors (dev/sda check return "device descriptor read/64 error").

You can try plugging your USB boot drive into the 2.0 port, AND that is the only USB 2.0 port active on the motherboard.

I moved the USB cable connected to my UPS, keyboard and mouse to USB 3.0 and the issue went away for me after a few reboots and a cold startup. Samsung Bar Plus USB 3.0 & Asus B550-F Gaming Wifi II motherboard.

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Unraid Will Not Boot Unless USB Flash Drive is Moved to a Different Port

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