Go from FreeNAS to Windows 10

1

When looking to create a home server from an old Windows 10 computer, I took the advice from a few websites to go over to FreeNAS. I now have the computer set as a home server, but I have found I don't like the setup and due to the ZFS file system, there seems to be a lot of drive space wastage, and that is not immediately noticeable as I cannot properly view drive space usage within a windows computer accessing it.

I now want to turn the computer back over to Windows 10 in order to set up network passworded file sharing that way.

  • I have spent over 3 days copying everything on the ZFS drives onto NTFS USB external drives (ZFS drives cannot be read in Windows 10 - another bugbear)
  • I have wiped all the files from the ZFS drives. The drives are still in ZFS format but free from files except the primary drive which has an empty folder called "jails" which cannot be deleted.
  • I have created a Windows install drive onto a separate USB stick to the FreeNAS boot USB stick using Microsoft's Windows 10 Media Creation Tool on my Windows 10 laptop
  • I have the USB stick inserted into the FreeNAS computer

Now when I switch on the computer, after it has attempted to go through the boot process, it says "This is a NAS data disk and can not boot system. System halted"

I looked in the BIOS settings and I cannot find anything in the boot settings for USB drive booting but inserting the FreeNAS USB boot stick works - the computer boots as a FreeNAS server and the BIOS shows the USB stick in the HDD Group Boot Priority as Generic Flash Disk it is not showing when the Windows 10 USB stick is inserted.

If it helps, the Motherboard is a MS-7613 Ver 1.1

How can I get the Windows 10 installation USB to boot?

Chris Rogers

Posted 2018-07-14T09:02:56.757

Reputation: 1 153

No answers