Setting up raid with no floppy?

[J-Roc]

ok, here's my situation. I have my new Bone Trail mobo all put together but i dont know how i am going to set up the raid aray. The mobo has no floppy connector on it and i have xp or vista upgrade i can load onto it. Now, with the vista upgrade, i'll have to install xp first so i have to get this working for xp then i can upgrade to vista if i feel like it later. I downloaded the raid drivers from intel but they only make a driver disk and when i ran the program it pointed out that i dont have a floppy drive. Apparently the driver program only owrks if you have A:/

I got a friend of mine to lend me his thumb drive but i cant set it as A:/ so the program will not load the drivers.


Seriously... who makes a mobo with no floppy drive then gives you a floppy set up driver program. Somone wasnt thinking...

Any ideas?

[nevermind1534]

You can use Nero to make a bootable CD with a floppy image, and there's also another way to do it. You'd probably find it right away on google. Or you could get a USB floppy drive. Most motherboards do support them now, I think.

[J-Roc]

i could get a usb floppy but then i'd have to pay for it and wait at least a week for it to ship.

I cant burn the files because there locked in the floppy maker program.

I'm working on somthing here, i'll let you know how it goes.

[crenn]

When I installed my system, I had to make a new ISO of Windows XP 64 with the raid image before I could install. I had an IDE floppy drive that wasn't supported.

[J-Roc]

this is flipping retarded!

I moved my disk's into the new chassi and low and behold! windows starts loading. I figure its going to give me some error and fail. Nope! I have sucsessfully moved an array from one computer to another. I get a message that pops up saying that due to asubstancial hardware change windows will need to be re-activated. Great, one less thing to fuss about. Now i cant get my cd drive to display properly. I can use the internet because i havent installed the ethernet drivers.

Im going to try and load the software onto an IDE drive i have and see if it'll show on hte new computer.

[crenn]

What controllers are you using for both PCs?

[Luke122]

Use a flash drive to transfer the drivers in.. much easier.

Next, have you confirmed that it is operating as an array? If you are using it to mirror, then make sure it's actually doing that, or it'll be a sad day when a drive dies. :(

[J-Roc]

Both boards have the ICH8 chipset which like the flux capacitor; makes time travel possible!

IM on the new comp now~! i had to load the drivers onto my IDE drive through Citrus. Re assemble my old comp, activate windows, move the files from the IDE drive to the Aray disks and then put the new computer back together. Installed the drivers and here i am! CD drive was detected aswell!

Now... I wanted a fresh install to begin with. The old computer was starting to get sluggish with the extra crap i had installed. Is there a program or a way to basicly backtrack to a fresh install state without actually doing a fresh install? I think i could "upgrade" to vista but i'd like to stick in XP Land for a while if i can.

[edit]
Luke, i had striped for performance. If its working at all, its working as an aray. I also tried the flash drive method, windows xp needs a F6floppy driver to be able to load from a flash stick (very stupid)

[nevermind1534]

Trade in your 32 bit xp for an x64 copy. Microsoft has a page somewhere on its website.

[J-Roc]

allready ordered!

[Luke122]

I also tried the flash drive method, windows xp needs a F6floppy driver to be able to load from a flash stick (very stupid)

You can use the same trick that I posted earlier to add USB flash drive support during install also. You just need to find the proper hardware identifier, and add the line in the same way as for the floppy drive. I've done it before with no troubles, it's just a bitch to figure out the first time.

[Airbozo]

...and... I did a clean install of a vista upgrade copy. Just do a normal install of Vista and at one point it will ask for your old XP disk to verify the upgrade.

fyi

Oh and vista will recognize a usb stick.

[crenn]

Airbozo, mine never asks for a XP disc..... it always tells me to run it inside XP.

[J-Roc]

Airbozo, mine never asks for a XP disc..... it always tells me to run it inside XP.

I had the same thing happen to me when i first got my vista upgrade. I know that if you have an older version of windos then xp (2000, me, ect) it will do a clean install.

I suppose the 64bit vista will want to do a clean install on my 32bit xp?

[nevermind1534]

I'm pretty sure that you can upgrade 32-bit vista to 64-bit. Not sure about xp, though. I was a little pissed when I found out that I couldn't upgrade from xp x64.

[Airbozo]

Try this to install cleanly;
http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/winvista_upgrade_clean.asp

[crenn]

OH SNAP!

When I went from XP 64 to Vista 64, I had a clean install anyway! But that guide really helps me out because working with XP setup is a real hassle when you don't have an outdated device (I actually had to install a no-key copy of Vista just to make a new image of XP 64 with my RAID controller drivers). Either way, it's a bit late for Microsoft to 'plug' that hole.

[J-Roc]

Thats damn good advice AirBozo! I'll have to try that with 64bit cd i ordered if its an upgrade too.

[crenn]

There is no 'upgrade' discs for Vista. Only CD keys!