Update + Unable to PowerOff = Blank USB?

[ehbush]

Hey all,

 

I'm a fairly new UnRAID user, as of about two months ago. Two nights ago, UnRAID updated to the latest beta version, and then needed a reboot. I tried to reboot, unsccessfully (which has been occurring the last week or so) and then tried to poweroff (from GUI and from CMD Line). Stuck for hours, ever after trying a number of diff things (load was average of over 15+ and continuing to rise). 

 

Anyways, I had to physically power it off using the power button (which I also had to do a week or two ago). This time however, unRAID will not boot. I get a flashing cursor. I have since updated the BIOS, and tried to navigate to the Flash Drive contents on Windows, Linux, and using Hierens Boot CD. The flash drive appears blank. In Hierens, it is 14.42GB free (16GB Flash Drive) and has no partitions and is listed as Unformatted. When trying to mount on Ubuntu, the drive shows up but there's no partitions or anything to mount (no filesystem). 

 

It appears as though the flash drive really is blank, I have checked all sectors on it and it came back successful. What are my next steps here? Is it re-downloading unRAID to another (or the same?) flash drive? Would an update/unclean poweroff cause this? 

 

I'm not super concerned with losing much since I had only transferred over about 800GB and that data is still on my Synology NAS, but this is becoming quite a headache, heh. 

 

Any advice/guidance/information would be very much appreciated!

 

Cheers!

[trurl]

At this point I don't think I would trust that flash drive. What brand is it?

 

You should have asked earlier about your problems shutting down. I have done very many updates, and even a few unclean shutdowns, and have never had a problem, so I don't think that is the actual cause your flash drive has failed.

 

Do you have a backup? You should always have a backup of flash. Everything about your configuration is stored in the config folder on flash and if you are able to copy that to a new install you would be back up and running just as before.

 

You can always download a zipped backup of flash from Main - Boot Device - Flash - Flash Backup. You should make a backup anytime you make any significant configuration changes, especially if you make any changes to your disk assignments.

 

[ehbush]

I don't have a backup, hadn't messed around enough to make one, but again, not too concerned about that. More concerned about how/why the issue occurred, because I'm contemplating whether or not this is the right solution for me - was probably something I did, but seems like a troubling issue after having only used it for about two months (and sporadically at that). 

 

Flash drive is a 16GB USB2.0 Kingston Data Traveler.