USB Stick for 5515 drive error

[John Forester]

Hi All,

I was wondering if anyone knows if there is a limitation or requirement on the type of USB stick I would need to use as a temporary drive1: for a 5515-X. We have a production ASA 5515-X (pre-firepower) that won't allow me to save its configs any more and is giving the error:

%error opening disk0:/.private/startup-config/ (Read-only file system)

error executing command

[FAILED]

My plan is to save the config to the USB stick as disk1: before I try to perform the recommended fix action I've read about (fsck disk0:). If I lose the configs, I hope to have the configs (and certificates) saved to the other drive so I can recover the ASA.

Can I use a simple USB from the store? Say a 4gig stick? (I've read that it has to be FAT32 formatted to be readable on the ASA)

If it doesn't work, I will have to order a new internal flash and pop the case and replace the faulty one.

Does anyone have any advice?
Thanks in advance

[Ajay Saini · Accepted solution]

If you just need a backup, you can use asdm backup and restore back feature or use tftp/ftp to take backup using cli, that way you would not need USB drive.

You are right, USB needs to be FAT-32 formatted to be able to use with ASA 5500x :

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/security/asa/hw/maintenance/5500xguide/5500xhw/asa_overview.html#14594

HTH

-
AJ

[John Forester]

Thanks Ajay,

I did not consider using ASDM as I am a CLI guy... In the end, the ASA did not see any space on the 4gig USB stick after I formatted it to FAT32. I couldn't save anything to the USB.

So I went ahead and performed the fsck disk0: and it cleared two damaged files and worked fine after that. After I rebooted, everything came up and worked.

Thanks again for the reply

[Ajay Saini]

Happy to help. !