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How is this possible with flash key swapping


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First, I'm frustrated  ::)  ...deep breath, deep breath...

 

I have two servers and 2 Pro keys, and I wanted to swap one with the other to use the more powerful motherboard and CPU for the ones with more HDDs.

 

I swapped out the PSU and HDDs from Tower case and put them into Moat's case.

Tried a reboot with Tower's USB flash key (5.0r8a) and nothing but trying to reboot over and over again.

I then tried Moat's key back in its' old case but with Tower's HDD, and unRaid boots... I turned it off.

 

Now thinking something bad happened to Tower's USB key in between unplugging it and using it again (why is beyond me).  I decided to go ahead and update it to 5.0r11 by copying everything onto the flash key except config/ and renaming config/plugins/ to disable it and put go2 back as the stock go script.  Used make_bootable, and then attempted Tower key reboot again.  Now nothing but blank screen.

 

Tried same process for 5.0r10, with the same results.

Went back to 5.0rc8a (make_bootable again) and once again it just seems to reboot back to bios screen.

 

From my understanding moving the flash key from one PC/server to another should be just plugging it in, especially in one that I know was working fine, both server and flash key.

 

What have I missed besides not overwriting my config/*cfg files?

 

 

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Depending on how your BIOS is designed, some allow to choose "USB Storage" or "USB HDD" as the boot device, others state it more specifically, like "Sandisk Cruzer 8 GB". Chances are your BIOS is the latter and when the original flash drive is not installed it tries booting off of a harddrive(which obviously it can't). Selecting the new flash drive as the boot device should solve your issue.

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I can understand that, although it seems to make it very difficult to use multiple Flash bootups (for maintenance or firmware updates/flashing), if it's so picky.

 

In this case, yes the BIOS showed SANDISK and both my flash keys are SANDISK but one is 4GB and the other is 8GB.

 

One works in both machines, and this one only worked in it's original machine.... so, I decided to keep the keys with its' original machine and modify the config/*cfg files to change Server name (ident.cfg) and IP address (network.cfg), and reset disks.cfg back to default to force a new config -- after bootup I manually re-entered the correct order of drives, said parity is already correct, and started the array (which is parity checking).

 

I'm OK with this solution but would have preferred it never happened to begin with... another day learned.

 

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It likely is as I described then. Setting it to boot from "Sandisk" the BIOS would detect a different model was inserted, even if the name was the same.

 

It does make it difficult for automatic booting, but every BIOS has a boot menu option, for mine its ESC. Pressing that a startup I can pick any boot device I want. That makes booting from different media/disks easier

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Use a SD card reader like the Kinston G3 to avoid this issue. See here: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=9502.msg90831#msg90831

 

This reminds me of the old dongle we use to have to use with some programs.  In effect that is all the USB drive is.  I am thinking about implementing this http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=3846.msg34018#msg34018.  I currently have two keys that I purchased, but still may do this.

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Some BIOSes change the boot priorities if the device isn't present, so simply plugging the flash drive back in isn't sufficient - you have to go back in to the boot setup to move the flash drive back in the priority (which rather makes a mockery of having a boot priority at all).

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