Updating from 13.3-RELEASE broke my boot-pool

TrueNAS General
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1

Had time to update to 13.3-U1.
However, the automatic WebUI update broke my boot-pool (USB drive).
I tired to boot in the old environments with the CLI, but had no luck: the error was the same, it was complaining about the pool label.
Strange, but nothing out of the ordinary… I have a config backup, so after a few tries I just said screw it I’m reinstalling from scratch.

What I can’t explain is how, even after formatting the drive (which apparently works flawlessly on Windows), the installer tries (fails) to boot from the old boot drive when trying to install from scratch, thus I believe leading to kicking off the drive and not seeing it when the Install screen finally splashes in.

I had to cripple my jails pool to get a working boot pool since I had nothing else at hand.
Will conduct further testing tomorrow.
Opinions?

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2

Did you try setting/changing the boot order in the BIOS?

I had this problem in the past, though it involved SATA SSDs. Same issue as you, until I corrected it in the BIOS.

3

Yup, but it didn’t change much… I booted from the usb with the ISO, launched the install, at some point the TN INSTALL tried to boot from the old, formatted boot drive (which I wanted to reinstall on), failed and bringed me to the azure install screen where I can select the boot drives.

I get the impression the system knows it’s the old boot pool and tries to run TN from there instead of simply reinstalling.

4

Why not safely format the boot disk and then try again to install FreeNAS Core 13.3 Community Legacy U1 Edition?

5

That’s what I did, but somehow it seems it survived the formatting.

6

That doesn’t sound right. Sounds like you should use a completely different USB drive. If it works, great. Then you can work on the issue with the drive issue. At least it is a good troubleshooting step.

7

Did you try to format It outside the TN installation? Like in Windows, using the long process…
Because if somehow data Is not been erasing , only thing make sense Is the stick Is failing

8

That’s the crazy part, I did!

9

Really odd… I would have try some low level formatter program, i ha e had use one in the past (totally free) to erase a bunch of HD but i can’t remember the name

10

A simple formatting will not necessarily remove other partitions.

If using Windows, try something like diskpart to doublecheck if there are any lingering partitions hiding on the drive.

11

I manually deleted all partitions with the disk manager before formatting the drive, but will check again with the software you suggested.

12

If you did that I suspect you caught them all.

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