I upgraded my system to 7.2.2 from 7.2.0. I did my usual checklist of updates and backups and then dove it.

Upon the first boot of the system, I got the screen attached. I saw in this screen mention of pressing enter to reboot which I did. Then it wouldn't recognize the thumb drive(booted to BIOS). I moved the drive out of the USB motherboard header to a regular USB front port. Still no go. I checked the drive on my main Linux PC. Seemed OK. I tried a port on the back of the PC. No go. Then tried another front port.

It finally came up! Whew! (having a victory beer as I type this, was sweating there for a minute)

I seem to have had problems with USB since I got this new hardware almost exactly a year ago. It's an ASRock Z790 PRO RS and the thumb drive currently is Samsung Bar Plus 3.1 64GB drive. It's definitely more problematic than the Dell R710 I had previously.

I was able to grab the logs directory off of the USB drive after it had booted to the error state.

Can anyone tell me what's going on here? Bad USB ports on my motherboard? USB 3.1(vs 2.0) weirdness?

PS - Going from 7.1.4 to 7.2.0 went smoothly.

It appears to be a flash drive issue; try a different USB port, ideally on a different USB controller. If the same, replace the flash drive.

Thanks @JorgeB !

The drive is only 7 months old. I tried other ports then finally got it to work on a port on the front of the machine.

It was originally on a USB motherboard header connector.

Is there a way to confirm the drive is fine now that it's working? That is, confirm there are no missing/corrupt files?

Edited December 10, 2025Dec 10 by nraygun

Look for any errors on the syslog, but corrupt files would be more difficult to test for.

1 hour ago, nraygun said:

It was originally on a USB motherboard header connector.

This is strange, but I have had issues using the cable style adapters on these. My fix was to use the firm chip type like this.

I don't see anything in the syslog that shows any problem with the thumb drive.

I can see it downloading 7.2.2 and its MD5. I see the shutdown request, stopping containers, and then a restart of the system right at the entry, "rc.rsyslogd: Syslog server daemon... Started." and then normal startup stuff.

Looks like it wasn't even aware of the multiple times I tried to boot from the USB drive.

19 minutes ago, Veah said:

This is strange, but I have had issues using the cable style adapters on these. My fix was to use the firm chip type like this.

Yeah, that's what I had. But now I have it plugged into a front USB port.
I'm thinking there's something wrong with the motherboard's USB ports in general. I've had numerous issues with them. But I can't confirm it, because then it starts working again.

3 hours ago, nraygun said:

I'm thinking there's something wrong with the motherboard's USB ports in general.

I would be more suspicious of USB motherboard adapter. Start by looking very carefully at the solder joints...

24 minutes ago, Frank1940 said:

I would be more suspicious of USB motherboard adapter. Start by looking very carefully at the solder joints...

Thanks @Frank1940

I removed the adapter and plugged the drive directly into the USB ports. Some also didn’t work but I wound up using a front port.

Plus, I had replaced this adapter previously figuring it was the problem.

I really think this motherboard had USB problems in general but can’t get consistent behavior.

It did it again. :-(

I just tested shutting down and rebooting without moving the drive and it failed to boot. I then booted my Ventoy drive and it came right up. I did this a few times to make sure the port worked, which it did.

I then put the USB 3.0 boot drive into into this port on the back of the server and got the same sort of error reported initially. I then rebooted yet again and it booted through and came up, again, like nothing happened. I even put something in the log via logger to show when I rebooted. Nothing out of the ordinary appearing in the syslog.

Maybe I burned up another thumb drive? I'm going to get a USB 2.0 drive if I can find a good recommendation and try to restore my backup to it.

Edited December 11, 2025Dec 11 by nraygun

2 hours ago, nraygun said:

Maybe I burned up another thumb drive? I'm going to get a USB 2.0 drive if I can find a good recommendation and try to restore my backup to it.

This will be hard and also uncessary.

Just look for a free USB2.0 on your PC (there are surely some available, maybe internally?

USB3.0 sticks will slow down and produce less heat (this is the 3.0 killer)

In 2.0 mode the sticks usually will last much longer.

Do the troubles stop if roll back to 7.2.0? If so, suggest keep it there.

9 hours ago, MAM59 said:

This will be hard and also uncessary.

Just look for a free USB2.0 on your PC (there are surely some available, maybe internally?

USB3.0 sticks will slow down and produce less heat (this is the 3.0 killer)

In 2.0 mode the sticks usually will last much longer.

Last time, this happened with the drive in a USB 2.0 port on the back of the server.

I have an industrial USB drive I'm going to try.

3 hours ago, Veah said:

Do the troubles stop if roll back to 7.2.0? If so, suggest keep it there.

I didn't have any occassion to reboot the server while on 7.2.0 so I don't know if it was happening before.

I do know that I had this same problem earlier this year(~May 2025) and changed out the USB drive then.

I'm going to replace the USB drive yet again just in case.

Make sure you have a current backup of your Flash Boot Drive... (Personally, I never reboot either of my servers unless the UPS shuts them down or I do an version upgrade.)

Shout out to Unraid support for turning around my license key so fast - it took 8 minutes to get the license key link in an email!

The replacement drive seems to work and so far has survived two boots with no problems.