Can't find USB 2.0 Flash Drive in 2023.

[AY.Z]

After giving Unraid much thought I decided to go that rout for my media + Plex storage solution. I have finalised the hardware which is entirely prebuilt HP Z820 Workstation. I am not a hardware guy, so the machine is going to be gotten ready for Unraid setup with additional cost to me, which I provided after taking all key noted from the documentation. Now the hardware is going to be ready on Tuesday 22 May 2023. Paid the half of the money already. I told the guy that I'll bring myown bootable flash drive the day server is going to be ready to pick up and will boot the server with free trial version for errors and tweaking in case anyting is not working. I had ordered 3 IronWolf 4Tb Array Disks, 1 6Tb Parity disk and 1 SSD 500 GB for Cache for my itnital setup. The disks have been delivered to the hardware guys. Everything is going smooth.

Except I still cant get USB 2.0 Flash drive with GUID. I ordered a couple of Flah drives two weeks prior to posting my first post a couple of days ago and none of them worked. Visited local hardware store today and people gave me funny looks I was looking for USB 2.0 in 2023. FInally found one store where I could found some, bought three different ones. The guys were kind enough to allow me to use their internet to download Unraid flash creator tool to check and confirm if the drives were good for my need. All three seemed compatible. Now when I tried to WRITE the image after getting back home. None of the drive seems to complete the "Write Image" Process. The downloading is fine but at the time of extraction of some files or somehting goes wrong all drives show the smilar error. ( The file or diretory \bzfirmware is corrupt and unreadable. Please run the Chkdsk utility.) Ran Chkdisk, nothing seems to be wrong in there. The flash drive has two folders with some files inside each written to it, not sure if this the whole thing a bootable supposed to have. 

Folder EFI > boot has  files as shown in the first image 

 

Folder syslinux has files as shwon in other image.

Can someone please take a look at the files in the images and tell if these are all the files supposed to be on bootable flashdive ?

 

 

[itimpi]

You have not shown the top level where all the bz* type files live.    If you download the zip file for the release from the Unraid site you can see exactly what files should be on the flash drive.   The only thing that should vary is whether the EFI folder has a trailing ~ character.  If not then UEFI boot is activated.

 

If you have trouble finding a USB 2 drive then a USB 3 should work fine.   No point in getting a large capacity one as Unraid needs about 4 GB.  Ideally you want to get one that has a metallic casing as USB 3 drives often get hot so good cooling can then help with lifetime as heat is bad for electronics.   If you can it is a good idea to use a USB 2 port (many motherboards no longer have external USB 2 ports but DO have them available via an internal header).

[Squid]

Use the manual method of creating the flash drive.  Nothing really special about doing it.

 

https://wiki.unraid.net/USB_Flash_Drive_Preparation#Windows_Vista_and_Windows_7

 

Just make sure its 32G or less

[AY.Z]

2 hours ago, itimpi said:

You have not shown the top level where all the bz* type files live.    

Hi, Thanks for your reply.

There were actually none. just two folders.

2 hours ago, itimpi said:

If you have trouble finding a USB 2 drive then a USB 3 should work fine.   No point in getting a large capacity one as Unraid needs about 4 GB.  Ideally you want to get one that has a metallic casing as USB 3 drives often get hot so good cooling can then help with lifetime as heat is bad for electronics.   If you can it is a good idea to use a USB 2 port (many motherboards no longer have external USB 2 ports but DO have them available via an internal header).

Oh great. Wish I had known this yesterday. 

Thank you again.

[AY.Z]

2 hours ago, Squid said:

Use the manual method of creating the flash drive.  Nothing really special about doing it.

 

https://wiki.unraid.net/USB_Flash_Drive_Preparation#Windows_Vista_and_Windows_7

 

Just make sure its 32G or less

This worked. The root or top level of the flash drive now has more files showing. I ran the script for making bootable. Hope thats it. 

Thanks a bunch guys.

[AY.Z]

Now that the bootable flash drive with free trial is ready I hope, I am wondering what would be the first thing to do after first boot. I mean ,the flash creator utility helps in setting up server name and DHCP etc and I have been so narrow on using this utilitly that havent looked elsewhere. Whats booting like after manual install method ? I am hoping to set it up once server is ready at the shop but the remaining of the stuff like pretesting drives and transfer of data is going to be where the server is going to live for the rest of its life. So any advice for me guys ?

[Squid]

DHCP is already enabled by default.

 

Server name, simply go to Settings - Identification.

 

 

[Vr2Io]

Few weeks ago, just buy some USB 2.0 stick, haven't try with Unraid. Quite cheap and doesn't matter even not work.

 

I won't insist must USB 2.0, but metal case and small in size must.

 

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B81ZCVBS?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share

Edited May 20, 2023 by Vr2Io