Plug the drive into the machine that’s going to run FreeNAS and make sure the BIOS is configured to boot from it. Once the image has been transferred the device is ready to boot from. Win32DiskImager can be used to write the raw image to a USB device. If the USB drive you’re using doesn’t have a fast write speed then expect the process to take a few minutes to complete. Then select the drive letter of the USB drive in from the device dropdown box.īe absolutely certain that you’ve selected the correct drive letter, you can easily corrupt a local drive if you’re not careful. Load the img file you’ve extracted by clicking on the folder icon and navigating to the location of the file. Then execute the program by running win32diskimager.exe.
Img file to usb zip file#
To use the program download the zip file and extract the contents to a folder on your computer. This program will transfer the raw disk image onto the USB drive. To write the image to a thumbdrive you’ll need a program called Win32DiskImager. 7-Zip works well for extracting compressed files. The compressed file is only about 125MB in size but uncompressed it jumps up to 2GB so make sure to extract it to a location with enough space. I recommend using 7-Zip to extract the file, it’s free and works well. Extract the image file from the archive.īefore the image file can be loaded on a USB drive it must be decompressed to your hard drive.
Img file to usb install#
Select the version, and architecture you intend to install from the download page then download the img.xz file. Instead of download the ISO file you need to download the IMG file instead.
Download the compressed FreeNAS image file. This problem usually only affects cheaper drives from shady manufactures, as long as you have a drive from a reputable manufacture you shouldn’t run into this issue.ġ. FreeNAS uses dual 1GB partitions so a true 2GB USB drive will hold the image just fine. My spare 2GB drive wouldn’t hold the image so I used a 4GB drive instead. The advertised capacity of a thumbdrive isn’t always equal to its actual capacity. This method requires no ISOs or blank CDs, all you need is a copy of the FreeNAS image and a USB flash drive that is 2GB or larger. FreeNAS must have it’s own dedicated drive, it cannot reside on drives that will be part of a storage volume in the NAS. I like to run FreeNAS directly from USB because it saves me from wasting a hard drive bay just for the operating system. After imaging the drive you can plug it into the computer, set the bios to boot from the drive, and watch FreeNAS boot directly from USB. The quickest and easiest way to get a FreeNAS server running is to write the image directly to a USB drive.