Hi, first time here and have heard about these forums from another that I am member of (AVS Forums) and am planning to build a new media server to serve up and store my audio, video and other media based stuff. I have a few questions.

 

The Wiki I read about the USB stick naming the Sandisk Cruzer was one of the ones that was recommended to load unRAID on. I downloaded the 3-disk version and put the files on the flash drive (4 GB), and made the disk bootable according to the instructions. For a test, tried to boot from USB on my Thinkpad T61 laptop, and my HTPC (MSI H55M board) and it would not boot, just booted straight to the Windows OS. I also have an older P4 MSI board (7 years old) that would boot from USB but as (USB-FDD)...couldn't select USB HDD as it didn't appear in the BIOS. Has anyone had any problems with the Cruzer stick getting it to boot?

 

I have another USB stick (Kingston DataTraveler 16GB) that I installed unRAID on exactly as I did for the Cruzer, and while it did not boot with the MSI P4 board, it did boot fine on the laptop and the HTPC, and was able to log into the WebUI. I would hate to waste a 16GB stick on such a small OS.

 

I was going to use the P4 system to test unRAID on but since the stick won't boot, I won't be able to use the board to test the server on. I did order new parts for the new server build so once it arrives I will test it then.

 

Don't have the hard drives yet, just have 2 SATA drives, one 160GB and the other 120GB. Not much but will do fine for testing purposes until I can get new drives. I assume that unRAID isn't compatible with IDE hard drives?

 

I was heavily debating on what to use for server software since I am building a new media server, so i am hoping that unRAID will meet my needs (along with some data protection). I'll read up on other threads and will post if I have questions.

I use a cruzer blade for my test unraid and I have used a standard cruzer in the past. no issues at all.

 

if your cruzer has the U3 partition still. it might be trying to boot that instead of unraid. then defaults back to the default drive.

 

I am assuming you ran the .bat file to make the flashdrive bootable.

 

as far as booting to motherboards without usb support. you can use plop as a work around. put a plop cd in a cd drive and have it boot the usb.

 

unraid suppports ide drives. it was built on ide originally. just take the slow speed of ide drives into account when doing performance testing.

 

 

I use a cruzer blade for my test unraid and I have used a standard cruzer in the past. no issues at all.

 

if your cruzer has the U3 partition still. it might be trying to boot that instead of unraid. then defaults back to the default drive.

 

I am assuming you ran the .bat file to make the flashdrive bootable.

 

as far as booting to motherboards without usb support. you can use plop as a work around. put a plop cd in a cd drive and have it boot the usb.

 

unraid suppports ide drives. it was built on ide originally. just take the slow speed of ide drives into account when doing performance testing

 

 

I wiped the U3 partition from the stick when I first bought it. Yes I did run the .bat file to make the drive bootable.

 

I did make the plop cd and tried it again on the P4 system....still didn't work. CD loaded the bootup menu just fine but when I selected the USB option it says its loading the boot record and then it hangs. I guess this motherboard just refuses to be bothered with booting from the stick. Oh well...doesn't matter anyway, I'll be getting a new board on Tuesday this week and the old one I am giving to my brother so he can build a system for himself. The old board is no slouch performance wise but doesn't seem suited for server tasks if I can't get the USB stick to bootup. So i'll have to wait to do my unRAID testing later this week.

 

But, I did run the plop CD with the laptop and booted it up, and tried the Sandisk stick again. And it booted up! The Kingston stick booted just fine without any assistance.

 

 

EDIT: Apparently I figured out the mystery with the Cruzer. After doing some searching I found that although I deleted the U3 software from the drive, the hidden U3 partition was still on the drive, and wasn't visible with any of the formatting tools I had used. Finally discovered the correct tool after some google searching and got rid of the hidden partition (rewriting the firmware). Now I just booted the Cruzer in the laptop and the HTPC and unRAID boots fine now.

 

I think next time I will just get the Kingston flash drives!

what tool did you use ?

 

I am in process to build my server and will need this  possibly :-)

 

thanks

U3 is such a PITA, I remember dealing with it in the past.  The Verbatim Clip-It is my current favorite flash drive.  Small, cheap, sturdy, fast (enough), no crapware, and best of all it comes in lots of pretty colors.  Greenleaf Servers ship with Verbatim Clip-It flash drives.

what tool did you use ?

 

I am in process to build my server and will need this  possibly :-)

 

thanks

 

The HP format utility works well

http://download.cnet.com/HP-USB-Disk-Storage-Format-Tool/3000-2094_4-10974082.html