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I need to install FreeBSD 10 on an old PC with no CD drive but it has a USB port. I'm on a laptop running Windows 8.1 and have downloaded the FreeBSD 10 DVD ISO image.
I have an external USB hard drive. I have the DVD ISO image. How do I go about preparing the external HDD with the files so that I can boot and install from this external HDD?
I tried UNETBOOTIN from Windows but it does not recognize the external USB HDD.
If your BIOS supports booting from USB, you can use one of the -memstick.img image files, located in the same area as where you got the .iso. file. You can write that image directly to a USB stick using Win32 Disk Imager or similar, and then boot from it to install.
It's a function of the BIOS on whatever sort of hardware you are attempting to boot with.
If the BIOS supports it, an obvious option is to burn a DVD and use a USB based DVD device. If your BIOS doesn't support it, no level of boot record magic will fix that.
Bottom line is to spend some time sussing your BIOS and perhaps flashing it to the latest/greatest (with all that inherent pain). An inability of your BIOS to find a boot target is not really a FreeBSD problem. (sorry, more snippy-sounding than I intended.)
