Do I need a floppy to install RAID?

[awb23]

So I just bought a couple SATA WD 500gig hard-drives. I want to install windows from scratch on my chaintech nvidia board in RAID 1 (using the onboard controller). I don't have a floppy drive but I've read on the internet that its the only way to install RAID and SATA to set up windows correctly from scratch. I can't believe thats true since floppy's such an old technology, I mean who has floppy drives anymore? Anyway if there is any way I can do this without having to run back to the store to buy a floppy drive I'm only gonna use once, please tell me. I've heard you can convert your drives to RAID after windows installs but I don't know if that includes the partition windows is on or not. Can someone clue me in on the best way to approach this?

 

[corkyg]

I don't find that to be true. I set up my mobo's SATA ports for RAID using the drivers that came on the mobo's utility CD. And, I added a SATA/RAID PCI card, and installed it using the drivers on the CED that came with it.

 

[stevty2889]

The only other option would be to slipstream the raid drives in to your windows cd. You can google for a guide to doing this. Otherwise, you will have to have a floppy, as windows XP will only search for the drivers on a floppy.

 

[boomerang]

Connect a single drive to your SATA controller. See if it is recognized by the BIOS at boot. If so, try a Windows install. If you can accomplish this you are golden.

RAID 1 is mirroring. You should be able to do this in this manner;

From Windows, install your RAID drivers. Either off the CD, or from the Chaintech site.

Now add your second drive and in the RAID BIOS set up your array and the contents of your boot drive will be copied to the second drive.

At this point, you don't know if you need drivers for your SATA drive or not. The manual may tell you (chaintech manuals leave a lot to be desired) or there may be FAQ's on their site.

You don't say what model board you have so we can't say for sure. Most boards these days have two controllers and the controller run off the mobo chipset should work for SATA without drivers. You are correct in that you will need drivers to run RAID.

Don't do an array from within Windows.

Edit: I run a floppy drive.

 

[awb23]

The mobo model is a chaintech VNF4/Ultra

 

[boomerang]

That will do SATA without drivers.

 

[awb23]

Ok, I got the 1 drive in and windows installed on it. I haven't installed any drivers yet, just have a quick question. I allocated 30gig for the windows partition and the rest of the drive (450gig) is partitioned but unformated. Of course I will eventually format it but do I format it first and THEN install the 2nd drive in RAID...or put the 2nd drive in first, install RAID and then format it?

 

[awb23]

Okay so I couldn't wait any longer for a response and I went ahead and put the 2nd drive in without reformatting it, figuring the raid thing would do all that automatically since it mirrors it. I enabled all the raid stuff in my bios and it took me to the nvraid bios thing. As I've never done this before I had no idea what I was doing. I just set it up as a mirror and moved both drives over to the right box. I hit the boot key so it said it was bootable, then asked me if I wanted to clear the disk, I said no because I already have windows installed on it. Anyway after I exited it just sits in dos and does nothing. What am I doing wrong?

Oh and my nvraid bios is v4.84

 

[boomerang]

If you partitioned the drive, you're going to have to partition the 2nd drive.

Afterwards, from within Windows you can partition and format the remaining capacity.

I saw no mention of you actually installing the RAID drivers. Did you?

As far as the intricacies of setting up RAID 1 for your particular system, I'm sorry to say I can't help you. I know that's not what you want to hear but they all function a little differently. You need to read up in your manual.

Let me take a look at your manual, sit tight.

Well I forgot just how bad their manuals truly were. They're nearly worthless.

Follow my advice above. Pay attention to boot order in your BIOS. If you can't get it going post in the Motherboards forum with a title like; How to RAID 1 using VNF4/Ultra.

Also, was there any mention in the RAID BIOS of source and destination disk or similar terminology? You usually have the means to tell it what drive is to be copied to which. This would be important in this case.

 

[awb23]

I read the manual but it is for a completely different menu. It's for Via's bios not NVRAID, kinda sucks.

Anyways this is the order I've done everything just so things don't get confused:
Install HD 1, partition 30gig for windows, install windows 30gig partition.
Install Latest Nforce Drivers in windows (I'm assuming the raid drivers are included).
Power off, install HD 2, boot up into NVRAID, add the array, esc and wait as nothing happens. That's where I'm stuck. =D

 

[boomerang]

I think you did something wrong in the RAID setup. See my edited post above.

It will take a while to copy from disk 1 to disk 2. You were not prompted that it was going to do that I take it.

I wish I could walk you through this step by step but I can't. It sounds like the RAID BIOS is the holdup right now. You're going to have to look at it more closely.

Me, I would partion a 30GB partition on that 2nd drive. I'm not certain how the copy function will deal with all that unpartitioned space.

And I'm sorry, but I have to bail out for tonight. My workday starts at 5:00 AM.

 

[imported_g33k]

Originally posted by: stevty2889
The only other option would be to slipstream the raid drives in to your windows cd. You can google for a guide to doing this. Otherwise, you will have to have a floppy, as windows XP will only search for the drivers on a floppy.

This is your best option OP. Slipstream the drivers into a win xp installation cd using Nlite. Having personally used this method, I can say it works perfectly without a floppy drive. Google 'nlite nvraid slipstream windows xp cd'.

 

[jleves]

At this point, borrow a floppy drive if you don't want to buy one. Get one from a friend for a couple days or a work computer or something. They take about 3 minutes to remove from a system. It will save you a headache and you would have been done by now.