old BIOS booting from USB


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Hi there,

 

i want to use my old computer as a server but I have some troubles getting the old bios to boot from the usb stick I created...

I made a short video showing all the BIOS setup screens. I am missing a general 'Hard Disk Boot Priority' menu where it shows all the detected bootable drives...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPa4k0Ux7yI

As you can see I cannot choose USB from the list for the 'First Boot Device'.

 

Second question: if this bios isn't capable of booting from usb is there a chance I can put unraid on a HDD and boot it from there? Even if I only plan on using the free version I can still put in an USB stick with an GUID if I some time want to use more than 3 drives, right?!

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Examine the USB settings. Usually the USB can be configured as emulated floppy or HDD.

and if not, look in the wiki for kicker-disk, or kicker-floppy.  It is possible to boot from a floppy disk, or a hard disk and then transfer control to the unRAID software.

 

(I used a compact-flash drive in an IDE adapter on one old motherboard.  It holds the unRAID software.  The BIOS on that old MB can't boot from USB, but a USB drive can have the .key file it is looking for once mounted.  I did use an alternate boot loader "grub" as it made the task for me a bit easier. )  Others have setup their servers to boot from a hard disk, again, not standard, but possible. 

 

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Try this, with the USB mounted when you boot:

 

Hit whatever key brings up the boot menu, that allows you to override the BIOS order.  Is the USB there.  If not, are the hard drives listed individually, or grouped.  If grouped, then expand that group.

 

That's where I found the USB to boot from, although I never found a way to permanently set that in the BIOS.

 

Cheers.

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Hi everyone and thank you for your fast answers!

Try this, with the USB mounted when you boot:

 

Hit whatever key brings up the boot menu, that allows you to override the BIOS order.  Is the USB there.  If not, are the hard drives listed individually, or grouped.  If grouped, then expand that group.

 

That's where I found the USB to boot from, although I never found a way to permanently set that in the BIOS.

 

Cheers.

That was what I meant with general 'Hard Disk Boot Priority' menu or boot menu but I cannot seem to find that. I tried F1 to F12...

have you tried updating the BIOS?

The Motherboard is from MSI and is called MS-6583. It is OEM stuff so its hard to find drivers for it. I found nothing on the internet :-(

 

Examine the USB settings. Usually the USB can be configured as emulated floppy or HDD.

I dont realy know what you mean by USB settings. There is nothing more than I showed in the video and I have tried Floppy or ZIP as first boot device, it always boots Windows :-(

 

Examine the USB settings. Usually the USB can be configured as emulated floppy or HDD.

and if not, look in the wiki for kicker-disk, or kicker-floppy.  It is possible to boot from a floppy disk, or a hard disk and then transfer control to the unRAID software.

 

(I used a compact-flash drive in an IDE adapter on one old motherboard.  It holds the unRAID software.  The BIOS on that old MB can't boot from USB, but a USB drive can have the .key file it is looking for once mounted.  I did use an alternate boot loader "grub" as it made the task for me a bit easier. )  Others have setup their servers to boot from a hard disk, again, not standard, but possible. 

 

Thank you very much, I think I'd have to go with that, if there is no other idea from you guys?!

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I don't  have any suggestions about how to solve your original problem.  Apparently, you are trying to use a very old piece of hardware to build an unRAID server.  From what I could see in your video, it looks like only IDE drives are supported by your motherboard.  The question which popped into my mind, what are your objectives for this server if you can get it to work?  How much storage are you looking for?  Do you have a stockpile of IDE drives laying around?  (If you haven't looked at IDE drive prices recently, I think you are in for some sticker stock!) 

 

If all you want to do is cobble together a system to evaluate unRAID, I think you can probably get it to boot from a hard drive.  But that will use up one of your four IDE ports. 

 

If your intention is to built a 3TB (or larger) server, you should probably be considering some new hardware (or least something three or four years newer than you have right now).  For a serious build, you should really consider getting something that has SATA support on the motherboard. 

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Thank you for your thoughts. I in deed plan on building a server off old hardware but I purchased a PCI SATA controller card (12€) which will hold up to 4 drives (See my other post here: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=21569.msg191523 ).

As this was just a quick idea to see what i can do with this old computer I think its worth a go. If I realy need a central storage in my network I will invest in a more powerfull solution which can manage tvtuners and sabnzbd/sickbeard/couchpotato all at once. But thats the long term dream ;-)

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Is there any chance unRAID can directly run from a HDD? All methods described boot into something and than boot the usb disk which is slightly slow so I was just wondering...

Has anyone an idea about this? Booting from the floppy + usb takes 3 minutes, is there any way I can install unRaid on an HDD and directly boot to it. I don't care about the usb-id since I use the free version.

Thank you

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Booting from the floppy + usb takes 3 minutes

Wow, that's pretty fast. My main system takes about 5 minutes from power on until it's fully ready to use with all the add ons running. I typically get several months of uptime between restarts, so waiting 5 minutes to boot doesn't bother me at all.

 

Why are you shutting down the system? Unraid is meant to be a set and forget type of thing, it spins down unused drives so idle power is pretty low. The only time mine is shut down is hardware maintenance or a power failure beyond my battery capacity.

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I would like to use the server only the time I need the data on it. Since I only have 2 Computers that need the data I would like to wake it over LAN everytime one of them is booted and shut it down when there's 5 minutes without connection.

 

So, have you a clue how I could put unRaid on a HDD?

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I would like to use the server only the time I need the data on it. Since I only have 2 Computers that need the data I would like to wake it over LAN everytime one of them is booted and shut it down when there's 5 minutes without connection.

 

So, have you a clue how I could put unRaid on a HDD?

 

There is S3 sleep which works with many boards.  I don't know if it is available on the standard unRAID interface but it is available with the  SimpleFeatures interface.  See:

 

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=12698.0

 

You will have to research your motherboard to see if it supports S3.  I do not use S3 so I can not be of help in getting it working as it also requires that you install some software on the clients to sent the wakeup packet over the LAN to wake the server up. 

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