Can the Dell PowerEdge T320 boot from a USB stick in hard drive emulation mode?

I am trying to install FreeNAS on a Dell PowerEdge T320. I've followed the instructions here (http://doc.freenas.org/index.php/Burning_an_IMG_File) to write the .img file to four different USB sticks with dd if=FreeNAS-9.2.1.5-RELEASE-x64.img of=/dev/sde, but I can't boot off of any of them. When I try to boot, I get the following screen:

F1 FreeBSD
F2 FreeBSD
F3 Drive 0

Then it auto-selects F1 and either prints # about once a second forever, or it sits with a blinking cursor doing nothing.

Forum posts and the wiki page linked above say to set the USB boot emulation mode to hard disk (as opposed to auto or CD/DVD/floppy), and older Dell PowerEdge models including the T310 have this option in the BIOS settings, but I cannot find it on the T320 with the latest BIOS 2.1.2.

I have even tried writing the USB image to a USB hard disk, but with the same lack of success.

Has anyone been able to find this USB boot setting on a T320, or been able to boot FreeNAS/FreeBSD from USB in some other way on a T320?


I too have been trying to install free nas but on a Dell R720 server and have exactly the same problem with it not booting from the usb stick. I have managed to install it to a internal Hdd via a free nas live CD. Free nas doesn't recommend this as you lose storage hard drive space.


Yes, I was able to boot using USB for Dell T320. The steps are below.

  1. Reboot the server
  2. Press F11 to enter the boot menu
  3. Select the Boot Menu option
  4. It will scan for boot devices
  5. Go to Hard disk using Arrow keys This is the point where you get a secondary menu with the option to select the USB attached device
  6. Select it and press Enter.

It will then boot from USB.