Installing Os on dell poweredge sc1425

chrisvb · 9 May 2011 at 16:38

I picked up a dell poweredge sc1425 off the bay for £75 about a year ago, 2x 3.2 xenons, 4gb ram & 300gb hd raid1.

Now it came with a winserver2003 coa and that was great, until i wanted a change. I wiped it and tried to install windows home server, no matter what i tried i couldn't get it to install through usb, I also couldn't get freenas to install through the cd drive. Everything i try it says "Please insert a bootable floppy" or along those lines.

Skidilliplop · 9 May 2011 at 17:05

Start with the obvious.

I bios has it got the CD/USB device set as a boot device? If there's any USB emulation settings make sure that's set to Hard drive not floppy etc.

It's also worth checking in there that you can see the relevant devices, stuff you get off ebay you can never take as 100% working. It is after all just a giant car boot sale.

chrisvb · 9 May 2011 at 17:09

Skidilliplop said:
Start with the obvious.

I bios has it got the CD/USB device set as a boot device? If there's any USB emulation settings make sure that's set to Hard drive not floppy etc.

It's also worth checking in there that you can see the relevant devices, stuff you get off ebay you can never take as 100% working. It is after all just a giant car boot sale.

it had win2k3 installed when i bought it and i've taken the lid off, checked connections, will go check the bios again. Cheers.

chrisvb · 9 May 2011 at 17:17

just tried it with it set to hard disk instead of auto, and OS install mode on. Still says not a bootable device.

Skidilliplop · 9 May 2011 at 17:22

What about trying a known working bootable CD?
Are you sure the USB stick is actually bootable? I.E try booting it on another machine.

simply copying the files from a CD/DVD to a memory stick doesn't make the memory stick bootable

chrisvb · 9 May 2011 at 17:30

Skidilliplop said:
What about trying a known working bootable CD?
Are you sure the USB stick is actually bootable? I.E try booting it on another machine.

simply copying the files from a CD/DVD to a memory stick doesn't make the memory stick bootable

I've just realised, although buying the server with a dvd drive. It's only a cd drive, can i just use windows burn utility to burn the freenas iso to a cd? when i try this it gives the same error.

Skidilliplop · 9 May 2011 at 17:32

use something like CDburnerXP to create a CD from iso image. Then you'll be laughing.

Also make sure it's a CD-R not a CD-RW. Standard CD drives can't read Re Writable disks, but they can read Recordable disks.

chrisvb · 9 May 2011 at 17:46

It's worked, booted into freenas installation after about 2 mins of medium error spamming something about the iscsi.

chrisvb · 9 May 2011 at 18:23

It worked and said freenas said it installed correctly but I'm vetting disc not bootable error when I remove the disc

beast_gts · 9 May 2011 at 23:23

Is it set to boot from the hard drive? The other thing to check is that the OS can see the drive if it goes via a RAID controller (but you said it installed OK so probably not this).

3dcandy · 9 May 2011 at 23:38

isn't it actually software raid on an sc1425? or have you added/bought with a raid controller?

chrisvb · 10 May 2011 at 15:10

okay, update: i've got freenas running from a hd, but everytime i try and install freenas or unraid to usb it just doesn't work, i get the message "boot error"

Skidilliplop · 10 May 2011 at 15:16

When you say installing to USB do you mean installing on USB storage or creating bootable installer on USB? The latter will require some jiggery pokery to get working.
The former will be fine if installing from CD to USB. But you will need to set the boot device to the USB device afterwards in order to boot the OS from it..

chrisvb · 10 May 2011 at 15:41

Skidilliplop said:
When you say installing to USB do you mean installing on USB storage or creating bootable installer on USB? The latter will require some jiggery pokery to get working.
The former will be fine if installing from CD to USB. But you will need to set the boot device to the USB device afterwards in order to boot the OS from it..

i've tried both, i get "boot error" I've followed the readme with unraid, and it comes up with boot error, also with freenas installing from cd to usb it says freenas is installed correctly but when i switch the boot device to the usb it gets stuck at "F1 to boot"

3dcandy · 10 May 2011 at 18:08

some of the older dell's don't like booting from USB and also have problems installing from USB. Have you tried updating the BIOS? You can download an .exe from Dell that will write directly to a floppy which you then boot from to update the BIOS

chrisvb · 10 May 2011 at 18:38

3dcandy said:
some of the older dell's don't like booting from USB and also have problems installing from USB. Have you tried updating the BIOS? You can download an .exe from Dell that will write directly to a floppy which you then boot from to update the BIOS

In my frustration I bought a USB dvd drive and it worked a treat, Only problem is the cost to run it and the noise

3dcandy · 10 May 2011 at 20:54

chrisvb said:
In my frustration I bought a USB dvd drive and it worked a treat, Only problem is the cost to run it and the noise

I have a PowerEdge 1850.....join the club!