newly attached USB drive makes OMV unable to reboot

Zitat von geaves

Apologies for butting in

It's all good.

Zitat von geaves

the above would suggest that the bios is controlling the boot order, yes you can set a machine to boot from usb, but in some cases you also have to 'set' the boot order within the bios, i.e. set the flash drive first.

There's so much variation. I had one machine with BIOS that would boot from USB, but on one specific port only. But, as you say, some have a boot menu and can detect bootable devices, allowing configuration of a discrete device boot order. Interestingly, my Intel mobo won't boot from a verified bootable drive that's attached by a transparent HBA, and it's a server grade mobo. With the Intel mobo, the boot drive must be on a SATA port or USB connected.

Zitat von mike02

OMV tries to boot from the internal hdd as soon as the external 5 TB USB drive is attached

That is odd behaviour, it would suggest that the bios is bypassing the 32GB flash drive, with everything attached/connected if you enter the bios setup does it display all the devices connected to it.

When you installed OMV to the flash drive was the internal drive disconnected.

Zitat von crashtest

Interestingly, my Intel mobo won't boot from a verified bootable drive that's attached by a transparent HBA, and it's a server grade mobo.

I was thinking of doing that but with a USB3 card and asked another user who had one, whilst it would work you could not boot from it, something to do with the initialisation of the PCie slot the card is in.

Zitat von mike02

No, the internal drive has always been connected

I still believe this is boot order issue, but when I played around with an old laptop I removed the internal drive.

What about the bios does it show the usb flash drive?

Zitat von mike02

which I wanted to avoid

TBH this is the only way to try and resolve this, what's the make model etc.

Zitat von mike02

Ok, so what information do I have to grab from the BIOS

You're looking at whether all the drives are displayed in the bios and their boot order.

Note that you might not find your BIOS to be like geaves describes. The boot order might be something like;

USB
CD/DVD
Harddrive
Network

There's a lot of variation in this.

Zitat von mike02

That's an odd behaviour, isn't

No, depends on the flash drive, computers are smart enough to locate where a boot loader is, is the usb stick usb2 or usb3 .

Zitat von mike02

Do you think it can be fixed with a new installation of OMV

No, leave the flash drive in the usb2 port

Zitat von mike02

However, if I plug the 32 GB USB stick into an USB-2 port, then OMV booted correctly even when the 5 TB USB drive is plugged into an USB-3 port.

That's an odd behaviour, isn't?

Not really. USB devices can conflict. It's happened before and it's not uncommon. (Plug in a scanner and the printer doesn't work.)

Here's the bottom line:
Your boot drive doesn't need USB3, even if it's a USB3 thumbdrive. OMV is small and boots pretty fast, so if USB2 works for the OMV thumbdrive, that's the solution.

And if the 5TB will work in a USB3 plug, that's excellent. Large file I/O really benefits from USB3's higher throughput.

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If you look at the hardware USB hubs on that PC, you'd notice that there are at least two different hubs - one for USB3 and one for USB2. There must be some sort of conflict between the thumbdrive, and the USB bridge in the external drive. Putting them on separate buses cleared that up.

Zitat von mike02

Since I had to physically access my old computer, I found an unused 250 GB Samsung EVO SSD which fits into my OMV computer. So I will install OMV on that internal SSD which avoids the USB conflict.

I'd so go with a thumbdrive to boot because they're dirt simple to clone, for easy OS backup. -> Guide (page 75 in the current version). Also, a thumbdrive saves you a SATA port which may come in handy later for expansion.

In any case, you're set.

Zitat von crashtest

I'd so go with a thumbdrive to boot because they're dirt simple to clone, for easy OS backup. -> Guide (page 75 in the current version). Also, a thumbdrive saves you a SATA port which may come in handy later for expansion.

Good advise! Key word here: backup. Oh, and easy.