February 5, 200818 yr OK, got all my hardware in, & have now spent 5 hours trying to get unRAID up & going. Im running 3 500G WD sata II drives on an Abit ab9 pro board. I've updated the board's bios to the latest version on their site, which was v21 The problems I am having, are with the USB Key. I've tried 4 now, & still can't get the server up all the way. Sandisk Crusier Micro 1G - Removed U3 using the u3 removal tool. Boots the system fine when setup as a windows boot disk (used to flash the MB bios) However when I reformat it & follow all the instructions for unRAID, the server is not able to see it as a bootable drive (BAD SYSTEM DISK...) (this is the key I just bought for this project) Sandisk Crusier Mini 1G - Never had U3 on this drive, formatted & loaded up unRAID 4.2 This one boots up great, & gets all the way to the login, but the problem is, in the last couple lines before it gives a login prompt, it says mount: special device /dev/disk/by-label/UNRAID does not exist and then it is not able to load the network settings, & therefore, does not work. I have made sure the label for this disk is UNRAID. I've re-formatted it countless times, & tried it with both 4.0 & 4.2 I also tried formatting this from several different systems as my main systems both run Vista, but my laptop still runs XP, but there was no change in behaviour based on what system formatted the key. (this one is an old flash key I've had for several years) Adata myFlash 4G - This one has the exact same issue as the one above. Boots fine, but doesn't see the device to mount it in the end. Generic micro-drive 2G - This one works both as a windows boot disk, and (reformatted) as the unRAID boot disk. But, again, no mount. This one is also very slow. I've tried plugging the USB keys into each of the 4 USB ports on the back of the server, but no change. I'm sure I'm just missing something simple, but it's got me stumped. Thanks in advance for any help!
February 5, 200818 yr The three things that cause most of the problems: * Removing U3 (doesn't seem to be an issue here) * Label it "UNRAID" * Make sure your bios is set to read it properly, my ASUS board required setting the USB key to "Forced FDD" (under the hard drive submenu, IIRC) Bill
February 5, 200818 yr Author Only the first one ever had U3 on it, & it's never been able to boot unRAID yet. I realize that it looks like it's not labled right, but I've re-formatted so many times now, & each time I type it, so I can't see how I could be doing it wrong everytime, on each of the 3 keys that are working. I would assume the bios settings are correct, as 3 of the 4 keys do get all the way through the boot, (~3-5 min) before it has the problem where it can't mount the UNRAID filesystem. I can also still reformat them as windows boot keys, & they will all 4 boot just fine to a dos prompt.
February 5, 200818 yr sorry, but please confirm that the label is: UNRAID (all capital letters, no spaces) not unraid, Unraid, UNraid, UnRaid, UnRaId, unRAID, etc. /Rene
February 5, 200818 yr Author OK, quick question, before I try somthing I might regret.. Does unRAID do anything to the hard drives while it is booting up? (other than check to see what they are) Reason for the question: I'm thinking about trying to boot this up on my laptop to determine if it is not just something on the MB
February 6, 200818 yr It does nothing to the hard disks unless you assign one of your disks on its devices management page to its array. You can safely boot up on the flash drive and access the management page to see the flash drive serial number/GUID. Just don't assign disks to the array, and don't start the array. Joe L.
February 6, 200818 yr Author OK, the problem is not the name of the USB key. After some work tonight, & alot of help, I was able to get my Crusier Micro to boot. On my laptop, it boots up just fine & is able to mount special device /dev/disk/by-label/UNRAID with no problem. However, same USB key, plugged into my server, boots up & eventually gives the message "mount: special device /dev/disk/by-label/UNRAID does not exist " & doesn't bring up the network. I'm going to start playing around with bios settings for awhile, but not sure that's got much to do with it, as the USB key is working well enough to boot the system up till that point.... I do get a couple screens full of the following message during the boot process, don't know if this helps or not. udevd: 4 processes running udevd: 4 processes running udevd: 4 processes running ...
February 6, 200818 yr Author Seems that the problem had to do with the sata controllers on the motherboard. On a whim, I pulled all 3 drives, & rebooted, & Hey! it booted fine. So, after playing around a bit, trying putting the drives in different slots, I found that by changing the BIOS settings to AHCI it all works. They don't show up in the bios now in the list of drives, while when I had them all set to IDE they did show up.. Oh well, not going to knock it, as it's now up & parity is syncing. (130m to go )
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