I followed the instructions here: http://lime-technology.com/getting-started/ using an old Windows laptop with a SanDisk Cruzer Fit 32GB. I also tried with a Kingston Traveler 16GB. I have used both of these drives with NAS4Free, FreeNAS, ESXi and memtest on this motherboard.

 

In all cases I end up stuck here: http://imgur.com/VoyQgm0. (blinking cursor).

 

I've tried the following:

Disable USB 2.0 support

Use syslinux on my linux workstation to make the USB drive bootable

Convert the extractred .zip archive into an ISO and made it bootable. This does boot in a VM but when I dump it on the USB it still gives me the blinking cursor.

I took the ISO and used Universal USB Installer to write it to USB. Same issue.

 

Motherboard is an ASRock P45R2000-WiFi.

 

I'm trying to get unRAID up and running to evaluate it.

 

Is there a place I can download an ISO of unRAID? I've used the FreeNAS/ESXi ISO to boot a VM and install the OS to a USB. Pop the USB out and put it in the server and voila.

Is there a place I can download a USB .img that I can write to the USB drive?

 

Other thoughts?

It sounds as if your PC is not actually trying to boot from the USB drive!

 

Is there an option you can press during the boot sequence to bring up a boot menu (typically F8 or F12)?  If so that will allow to ensure that you have selected the USB drive to boot from.  If this process works it will then be a case of working out what BIOS settings your PC needs to default to booting from the USB stick.

It's booting from the USB; it's first in the boot order and I explicitly set it (F11 to select boot devices on my mobo).

Make sure your BIOS is set to regular USB boot, non UEFI.

I can't recall what "regular" is listed as, but it won't work with the UEFI option.

My bios version doesn't support UEFI currently.

 

Is there an USB .IMG I can download and write to the USB instead of extracting a ZIP and trying to make the USB bootable?