Replace Flash Drive

Mopar_Mudder

By Mopar_Mudder
in General Support

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bonienl Veteran

bonienl

Posted
Posted

You must have a very small flash device...

The procedure is simple

1) Format your new flash device and give it the label UNRAID

2) Copy everything from your old flash device to your new flash device

3) Run "make_bootable"

4) Start your system with the new flash device

5) Go to Tools -> Registration and follow the instructions given there

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Mopar_Mudder Explorer

Mopar_Mudder

Posted
  • Author
Posted

Well it should be simple. I have tried 3 flash drive or different brands and sizes with no success. The first one gave an error while making bottable of "Writing MBR: Access denied". When I tried to start unraid it did start to but then got stuck on "kernel panic-not syncing: VFS:unable to mount root fs on unknown block"

 

The other two flash drives I tried ran the Make Bootable fine and said success. But they don't even boot, just starts up to my hardware monitor and does nothing.

 

I formatted the flash drives Fat32 and then ran the Make Bootable BAT file as Administrator.

 

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  • 1 month later...
French-Guy Contributor

French-Guy

Posted
Posted

If using the Unraid USB creator tool:

Option #1 offers "local zip" as an option. Does that mean it will create - on the new flash drive  - a copy of the current flash drive assuming I did a backup from the GUI?

Once done, I just need to boot my server with the new flash drive installed and then proceed with "5) Go to Tools -> Registration and follow the instructions given there" as explained in the 2nd post by Bonienl?

 

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French-Guy Contributor

French-Guy

Posted
Posted (edited)

Well, anyways I tried with option #1, selected the zip from my download folder, then selected the new flash drive

When I click on Write, I have the warning message about the USB device that will be wiped. I click on "Erase and write", but then I have an error message: 

Error: couldn't open \\?\PhysicalDrive1

 

What does that mean?

Should I just try with what is explained in 2nd post without using the Unraid USB creator tool?

Thanks

Edited by French-Guy
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French-Guy Contributor

French-Guy

Posted
Posted

If I remember well, i think I used that newer flash drive (Sandisk Cruzer fit 4Gb) to make a test with the trial version, somewhere last year

Could it be the reason I have issues?

I tried from another computer (still Windows 10 though) and have the same error message Error: couldn't open \\?\PhysicalDrive7

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TSM Contributor

TSM

Posted
Posted (edited)

No idea if it will help or not, especially if these are brand new completely blank drives.  But I might try using diskpart to delete and then recreate the partition on the flash drive. I have had the experience before with flash drives, where the windows gui format utility will seem to work, but the drive is not actually usable until I recreated the partition.  

Edited by TSM
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French-Guy Contributor

French-Guy

Posted
Posted (edited)

I tried Diskpart (FAT32 and also NTFS) but I still have the same error message when running USB creator even as Admin.....

 

I also tried the old method (extracted the zip and copy/paste onto the new flash drive) but when I run makebootable, i have the following error:

Make Bootable v1.5
ERROR - syslinux executable not found, expected: D:\syslinux\syslinux.exe

Edited by French-Guy
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limetech Veteran

limetech

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, French-Guy said:

I tried Diskpart (FAT32 and also NTFS) but I still have the same error message when running USB creator even as Admin.....

Please describe your PC - are you running windows in a VM?  what version of windows?  etc.  When you plug the flash into your PC can you access it normally?

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JorgeB Grand Master

JorgeB

Posted
Posted
On 9/21/2018 at 2:24 AM, Mopar_Mudder said:

When I tried to start unraid it did start to but then got stuck on "kernel panic-not syncing: VFS:unable to mount root fs on unknown block"

If you want to try this worked for me for an identical error, on the flash drive edit syslinux/syslinux.cfg and add root=sda to the boot option you're using after initrd=/bzroot, e.g.: 


  

label Unraid OS
     menu default
     kernel /bzimage
     append initrd=/bzroot root=sda

 

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French-Guy Contributor

French-Guy

Posted
Posted (edited)

Yes I did...............see few posts about

What I did is:

1) Extract the zip file (flash backup)

2) Format the USB drive in FAT32 and name it UNRAID

3) Copy/Paste the content of the extracted folder into the flash

BUT:

-) At the end of the copy/paste, I get this:

 image.png.fb8fde21464d87ea16bcbbf9993c1da5.png

 

-) Then I select "Replace the files in the destination". But when I click on Makebootable, I get the following error message:

image.png.be279b508d902d3f76b15738984e64d8.png

 

 

Should i try to take the current flash drive out of the server and copy it directly into my laptop and avoid doing an extraction of the zip file?

 

This issue with this new flash drive is "frustrating".............Like I said, I'm pretty sure it worked fine last year when I tested the trial version (wanted to test the latest version while I was still running 4.7 on my current server)

Edited by French-Guy
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itimpi Grand Master

itimpi

Posted
Posted (edited)
23 minutes ago, French-Guy said:

ses I did...............see few posts about

What I did is:

1) Extract the zip file (flash backup)

2) Format the USB drive in FAT32 and name it UNRAID

3) Copy/Paste the content of the extracted folder into the flash

BUT:

-) At the end of the copy/paste, I get this:

 image.png.fb8fde21464d87ea16bcbbf9993c1da5.png

 

-) Then I select "Replace the files in the destination". But when I click on Makebootable, I get the following error message:

image.png.be279b508d902d3f76b15738984e64d8.png

 

 

Should i try to take the current flash drive out of the server and copy it directly into my laptop and avoid doing an extraction of the zip file?

 

This issue with this new flash drive is "frustrating".............Like I said, I'm pretty sure it worked fine last year when I tested the trial version (wanted to test the latest version while I was still running 4.7 on my current server)

Look to see if you have a syslinux folder on the flash drive.   I have a feeling that at one point the flash backup omitted this folder.    If not extract it from the ZIP file for the releawe downloaded from the Limtech site and replace it from there.

Edited by itimpi
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JorgeB Grand Master

JorgeB

Posted
Posted
26 minutes ago, French-Guy said:

Should i try to take the current flash drive out of the server and copy it directly into my laptop and avoid doing an extraction of the zip file?

Download the latest release from the website, create the flash drive, then copy just the config folder from your backup, overwriting the existing files.

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French-Guy Contributor

French-Guy

Posted
Posted (edited)

OK, done.....I was able to copy/paste the newest release and launch the makebootable with no error

Now, i just need to copy my current config folder and test the new flash drive..........finally 😀

I guess I will have to do something to register the new flash drive....How long does it take usually?

 

Thanks for the help

 

Edited by French-Guy
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