Booting FreeBSD from USB

calendar 2013-03-17 · 1 min read · FreeBSD USB  ·
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I have (again) changed disk layout on my NAS. I have got a PATA SSD on which I need to install and boot FreeBSD. I hope this can save me som electicity (the non SSD can spin down). And of course it will give me some speed.

First get the newest boot image for USB sticks: FreeBSD-9.1-RELEASE-amd64-memstick.img

Write it to the USB stick (mounted in the FreeBSD box:

1[jesper@tranquil ~]$ sudo dd if=FreeBSD-9.1-RELEASE-amd64-memstick.img of=/dev/da0 bs=64k
211732+1 records in\r\n11732+1 records out
3768925696 bytes transferred in 87.933050 secs (8744445 bytes/sec)
4[jesper@tranquil ~]$

On my Tranquil BBS2 i had already set the USB-boot to be first priority in the BIOS, so the boot went just fine.