Embedded USB and ASRock motherboard

[finalriposte]

Hello,

I have just set up a system with a ASRock Z77 Extreme 4 motherboard.
While my NAS4Free Hard drive installed from the Live CD on another system works fine, the embedded USB disk does not.
It freezes at the point that the motherboard is looking for a disk. There are no errors, just a prompt on the top left of the screen.
I have tried a USB stick with open media vault and that is fine.
I have updated the BIOS to the latest version.
While nas4free is working fine as is, I'd prefer to run embedded for a couple of reasons.
One, it seems to be the projects preferred option.
Two, upgrading will be easier with the firmware upgrade option.
If anyone can point me towards doco that may help me troubleshoot this it would be much appreciated.

System specs:
ASrock Z77 extreme 4
Intel g850
16 GB RAM
onboard graphics
system drive Seagate ST3400620AS 400GB HD
Storage drives: 4 x 2TB Hitachi 7k3000

[raulfg3]

Sorry but instaler is BSD pure, not Nas4Free, there are none that can do in this side, try / revise your HD config in Bios, must be AHCI but sometimes IDE compatible mode is the only mode that works.

Do not unlike full install If works fine for You, You allways move logs to data disk to minimize writes on USB key.

PD: upgrade full is as easy as insert a CD with new release an choose apropiate option, and full have other advantages like easy install of packages like miniDLNA.

[finalriposte]

Thanks for the info, I'll try the different IDE/AHCI options and get back to the forums with succecss/failure and report it to the appropriate hardware list.

[armandh]

I use embedded but not USB.

none of my "in use" NAS [see below] boot from USB
USB booting is great when it works, and it usually does!
but when it does not it is difficult to deal with

it varies by hardware but USB booting was sort of a tack on [IMHO]

for my "in use" NAS I prefer PATA or SATA flash drives
these have always worked for me
http://www.logicsupply.com/categories/f ... sh_modules

but I have found that small hard drives loaded with the embedded OS
may be spun down after the boot, avoiding the mechanical wear issues.
under the drive management tab, install the embedded Boot drive
with the spin down set to 5 minutes [do not mount the drive]

it will spin up for boot and as needed for config changes
then after 5 minutes it will spin down.
I am currently testing this with a 2.1 Gb 44 pin laptop drive
salvaged from an old xerographic printer, it has worked flawlessly to date.

problems with USB booting are, I believe, usually bios related, such as
1)the order in which USB ports are searched for boot files
[hangs the boot when storage with no boot is found first.]
2)old hardware unable to deal with USB boot sticks of large size
real mode without versatile drivers, [smaller drives work]
3) NO USB BOOT here a plop boot floppy may allow USB boot

[Onichan]

I use full on a USB and it works just fine on the Z77 Pro4-M so it should work fine on the Extreme version too. I haven't tried the embedded, but not sure why it wouldn't work.

I use http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820211572 which seems to preform rather good. Plus it is cheap, fast, and has plenty of extra room.

[davidb]

Hello! I recently purchased an ASRock H77 PRO4/MVP motherboard, and i was seeing the same problem when trying to boot to an SSD system drive. The problem ended up being that with drives connected to the extra SATA III ports, you have to enable the "boot rom" feature in EUFI/BIOS for it to boot. The symptoms is just a blinking cursor in the top corner of the screen.

It was under "Advanced">"Storage Configuration">(ASMedia SATA3 Mode=AHCI) "SATA Boot Rom=Enabled".

For me it didn't want to boot any device until i did this. Please let us know if you get it working!