# MountRoot> on external hard drive



## DozyVan (Feb 3, 2012)

Hi guys, I'm having an Issue installing FreeBSD onto an external 37G hard drive. I use this hard drive to test all OS's I'm interested in trying out b4 before I use them properly. Up until now I have been a bit of a Linux head and now want to try something new (and maybe go through a conversion). So I do apologies that I am a FreeBSD virgin. 


The *F*reeBSD installed perfectly on my VMware (which I use just to check how the installation works not to try out the OS) but when I try to install on my external drive it goes through the installer, restarts, and as soon as I boot into external drive I get a mountroot> prompt which I don't know how to do anything with. I have tried a few google search results to try and fix it but no joy.


Any suggestions?


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## wblock@ (Feb 3, 2012)

External USB drive?  At the prompt, wait a few seconds and press enter.  That will allow for slow-to-connect USB drives.  (I have not tested this lately, may be forgetting something.)


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## DozyVan (Feb 4, 2012)

Thank's for the reply. I tried as you suggested to no avail all I got was:


```
panic: mountroot: unable to (re-)mount
```

Also I feel I should point out. When I run the installer onto my external drive once the installer's done It restarts with out asking me to and before I configure even the root password. I tried installing the OS onto VMWare using the same DVDRW and it worked perfectly.


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## DozyVan (Feb 29, 2012)

I am sorry to bump this but any help at all would be greatly appreciated. Is their any extra info you would like me to give you for you to help me resolve this issue?


This is an OS I would LOVE to try out but thus far my attempts to use it are being met with this prompt


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## DozyVan (Mar 3, 2012)

update: I re-downloaded the FreeBSD and tried to install again on a new external Hard Drive. This time I never got a 
	
	



```
mountroot>
```
 prompt but it never asked me to set an IP V4/6 address during the install. Thus unable to go online or get the Gnome or KDE interfaces.


Using the same CD I overwrote my old desktop and it asked to configure IP in the installer? Is it just unable to install onto an external HDD or am I using a wrong ISO file for installing onto an external drive?


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## michaelrmgreen (May 5, 2012)

This rings a distant bell. I think if you type 

```
?
```
at the mountroot> prompt you get a list of devices. Enter the one that starts ufs:ufsid then press enter. If that works add an entry in fstab.

Hope that helps. I'm a bit vague on the details now.


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