PNY Atache Drive

[TSM]

Anyone ever had luck booting from a PNY Atache Drive?

 

My motherboard is an Intel DP35DP.  So far I have been booting into Unraid Basic using a 256mb Kingston Data Traveler.  This particular flash drive was given to me at work by a vendor, with his software on it.  I have no idea of the history of the drive or what it may or may not have been through.  Given that its 256mb, its gotta be at least a few years old, since you can't even buy one that small anymore.  But its been working.  The only Bios tweak I needed to do, was to make the motherboard think this was a fixed disk as opposed to a removable one.

 

I'm going to take the plunge into Unraid Pro.  Now that I've moved all the data off of my old NAS, I'm going to add the disks from this, to my unraid.  Since you gotta pay $119 per license for the pro, and this is non-refundable and non-transferrable (which Sorry Tom, thats crap by the way, if you pay for a piece of software, you should be able to move it to another media if the original breaks, even the evil giant Microsoft understands this).  Anyway, I was nervous about putting the pro on an old drive, which I don't know the histroy of. 

 

So, I bought a new PNY 2gb Atache.  I syslinux'ed it.  Copied the unraid basic files to it, only so I could boot it and get the GUID.  I've tried every BIOS setting having to do with usb devices and booting in general on the motherboard.  No combination will boot with this drive.  Has anyone ever been able to boot with this drive, or another one by PNY in the Atache series?

 

Thanks,

[WeeboTech]

One of the biggiest problems I had with the USB flash is the MBR.

 

Once I remmebered to set it, all of the flash keys that I thought did not work, ended up working.

 

Try syslinux with

 

These are only in the Windows version:

-m	Mbr; install a bootable MBR sector to the beginning of the
	drive.
-a	Active; marks the partition used active (=bootable)

 

or use a win98 boot disk (if your drive is visible from dos

and do  fdisk /mbr X:

where X: is the drive of the flash key.

 

 

[RobJ]

I use a PNY Attache 1GB drive to boot mine, got it in a cheap 3 pack.  It's been awhile but I didn't have any problems preparing it for unRAID, booted up first time.  I've had no problems with it since either.

 

[TSM]

One of the biggiest problems I had with the USB flash is the MBR.

 

Once I remmebered to set it, all of the flash keys that I thought did not work, ended up working.

 

Try syslinux with

 

These are only in the Windows version:

-m	Mbr; install a bootable MBR sector to the beginning of the
	drive.
-a	Active; marks the partition used active (=bootable)

 

or use a win98 boot disk (if your drive is visible from dos

and do  fdisk /mbr X:

where X: is the drive of the flash key.

 

 

 

I did this, and everything booted up right away, with the same bios settings that worked for the Kingston Drive.  Big Thanks.  Now I have another problem.  The array isn't starting.  On the Main Unraid screen, it just says starting in the Command Area. 

 

Oh Oh OH!  Wait....  Now its checking parity and everything appears normal.  Its gonna take 215mins to finish, but now I'm breathing easier.  I'll bet people have screwed up their unraids royaly by trying to reboot them just before something like this.  I didn't realize it would need to check parity after swapping the flash.