# FreeBSD-11.1 from memstick install into external USB 3.0 hard drive



## balgaa (Aug 25, 2017)

Hello,

1. I installed FreeBSD-11.1 from USB memstick into external USB 3.0 hard drive root ZFS+Geli.

During installation USB memstick named disc da0 and external hard drive named da1.

After installation when disconnect USB memstick from USB, then external hard drive named da0.

Then boot process started, but can't mount disc. I reconnect USB memstick and boot again from USB 3.0 external hard drive and modified /boot/loader.conf da1 to da0 manually.

After modification booted again, but boot process stopped at mounting disc. I did again manual mount hard drive.

How can I fix it?

2.After manual boot I done source upgrade to FreeBSD-11-stable done, it change boot symlink to boot directory. After reboot, can't find mount disc... 

What kind of manual modification needed after symlink to directory change?


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## Phishfry (Aug 25, 2017)

You need to modify /etc/fstab to reflect the change.

Not sure what your doing to /boot/loader.conf. It does not need to change. Maybe for GELI?


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## balgaa (Aug 25, 2017)

/etc/fstab has only swap, because i am using ZFS.

both ZFS and GELI file name modified


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## sko (Aug 25, 2017)

Are you booting via EFI or legacy? 
EFI booting is more robust to hardware changes like swapping around disks, but a lot of BIOS especially on desktop hardware are quite buggy. Booting from USB is also a common problem for some vendors (acer...).

Can you give the exact output/error message from when the boot process stops?
I suspect something like the ZFS pool not being detected because of the changed disk identifier.
ZFS should find all available providers and assemble the pool no matter how they are being renamed. To always use GPT labels instead of the (variable!) geli name add this to your loader.conf:

```
kern.geom.label.disk_ident.enable="0"
kern.geom.label.gptid.enable="0"
```


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