installing RAID drivers during XP install without a floppy?

[Swampthing]

I don't have a floppy drive on ANY system, don't need them anymore, i only use bootable CD's.....During my winxp install on a new raid system I of course have to hit f6 to install drivers. The problem here is that it seems to ONLY look to a floppy drive? There's GOT to be a way to get this to look somewhere else? I really don't want to have to buy a damn obsolete floppy JUST to install windows once.

 

[cleverhandle]

You might be able to slipstream the drivers into a CD image. But I'm not sure you can do that for the setup drivers, it's designed more for the post-setup driver installation. If it's possible at all, it would be a lot more work than just plugging in a floppy during the install.

 

[tigerwannabe]

far as i know, you gotta have a floppy if you want to install 3rd party drivers. although i don't think it's safe, you might be able to interrupt the install, hack the txtsetup.sif file & point it to where your raid drivers are located. i don't think you could use a USB drive, because at the point of xp install, there's no USB support loaded.

 

[Swampthing]

Gah.....wonderful, i get to go buy a nice antique tonight then i guess.


Thanks guys, appreciate hte help even though I still have to buy a paperweight.

 

[EeyoreX]

Not to be an @$$ but I always get a chuckle when I hear about these problems. People say that they don't have a floppy because they are "useless" or "don't need them anymore" and then run into a situation where they are not only usefull, but, in fact, needed.

Until something comes along as an actual floppy replacement, with full support for booting etc, we will still need to have a floppy drive laying around at least, if not installed. I use mine once in a blue moon, but I am glad I have it when I need to reinstall my OS on my RAIDed hard drives. And I am still not comfortable with BIOS flashes from CD. Oh well. Live and learn.

\Dan

 

[manly]

Nothing to chuckle about. The problem is Windows Setup is deficient, not that many people are still better off with a floppy drive in their modern rigs.

 

[pukemon]

Originally posted by: manly
Nothing to chuckle about. The problem is Windows Setup is deficient, not that many people are still better off with a floppy drive in their modern rigs.

I agree with the Setup being deficient. I think that since many people have two drives installed (burner and DVD-ROM) it would make sense to at least check for other removable devices in addition to the floppy check for drivers. Since at that point the ATAPI and some SCSI drivers are already loaded it could check for other CD/DVD drives.

 

[SnapIT]

I assume that you have a pseudo-software raid system installed? like promise or fasttrack ide? this should be a warning sign bold enough to whack your head into the light...

If you're going to use RAID, use real RAID a card that has it's own bios will take care of it, the OS will see it as one drive... And never ever, ever, ever ,ever use RAID0 it is the most stupid thing man has ever thought of, it increases seek times (which is what you SHOULD be worried about unless you got the latest Adaptec card with one gig of cache) and it means that if one drive goes, all goes...

IDE RAID is a selling point for idiots...

 

[Swampthing]

uhhh, ok if you say so.

 

[EeyoreX]

Personally, I still find it "chuckle worthy". Even if Windows setup were to detect and use a CD for drivers, such as those for a RAID controller, I don't see many manufacturers rushing to put ~500k of data on a CD when it fits, more than adequately, on a floppy. The floppy drive may not be new technolgy (it's what, 20 years old?) that doesn't always mean it is useless. Just because something is old does not make it a bad thing. People drink aged wines for example. Sometimes what's been around the longest is the best solution. CDs are cheap, I understand that, but it would be a terrible waste of even the 3" 150MB cds to store 500k of data.

\Dan

 

[manly]

Well the aged wine analogy is simply a flawed comparison. Otherwise, we'd all still be using original IBM PCs.

As far as the waste issue, AFAIK CDs clearly cost less to press per unit than floppy disks. We all know how cheap CDRs are as well. CD media is at least an order of magnitude more reliable. Who cares if you don't fill up the 650 MB capacity; most hardware vendors stopped shipping their bundled software on floppy disks years ago.

I'm not saying floppy drives are useless (in fact I just bought one), but agreement is fairly universal that they are not the best solution around. They're certainly unnecessary for the majority of new PCs. Most of your argument points simply don't hold up.

 

[jukes]

I have the exact same situation. It's too late sitting here to go out to compusa and buy a floppy. Who knew that Microsoft still expects people to have a floppy drive.

What's this talk about floppy drives still being useful? I haven't used a floppy disk in five years, ever since i learned how to ftp. It seems kind of silly to have an installation process depend on a specific hardware component. The only thing that they should assume is that you have a CD-ROM (and only because its a CD-ROM distribution).

By the way, I didn't get a floppy with the controller, it is integrated onto the motherboard (SATA). I got a CD.

Oh well... until tomorrow then.

 

[josphII]

Originally posted by: EeyoreX
Personally, I still find it "chuckle worthy". Even if Windows setup were to detect and use a CD for drivers, such as those for a RAID controller, I don't see many manufacturers rushing to put ~500k of data on a CD when it fits, more than adequately, on a floppy. The floppy drive may not be new technolgy (it's what, 20 years old?) that doesn't always mean it is useless. Just because something is old does not make it a bad thing. People drink aged wines for example. Sometimes what's been around the longest is the best solution. CDs are cheap, I understand that, but it would be a terrible waste of even the 3" 150MB cds to store 500k of data.

\Dan

why would it be a waste? i probably costs less to make a cd than it does a floppy disk

 

[Confused]

I have a solution for this. It's not too pretty, but it allows you to get past the text based portion of the setup without a floppy drive.

My RAID drivers came on a CD, and told me to copy them to a floppy. Of course I have no floppy, and so I finally found half a guide on the internet, and tweaked it to this, and this works


This is how I added my Silicon Image 680r ATA133 RAID Drivers to my Windows XP CD:

Copy the entire contents of the XP CD to a directory on your hard drive, for example C:\XP\
Copy the TxtSetup.oem and PnP680r.sys and PnP680r.inf files (or just all the files that came on the driver CD, I am using PnP680r in my example because that's what my files are called) to C:\XP\I386\$OEM$\$$\DRIVERS\IDE


Also copy the .sys file to C:\XP\I386

Open the TXTSETUP.oem file that came with your card with Wordpad

Open the TXTSETUP.SIF file in C:\XP\I386 with Wordpad

In TXTSETUP.SIF, search for [SourceDisksFiles] and add PnP680r.sys = 1,,,,,,_x,4,1 in this section

Search for PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_3092&SUBSYS_00018086 = "i2omp" and add a line after it, using the same format, but using the information from the txtsetup.oem file.

Search for hpt3xx = hpt3xx.sys,4 and add the line PnP680r = PnP680r.sys,4 after it

Search for perc2gat = "Dell PERC 2/3 RAID Controller (Gatling)" and add the line that looks similar from your txtsetup.oem file. Otherwise, copy this line, and change the first bit to the name of your .sys file, and the 2nd bit to the name of the card.

Of course you will have to change everything to match the name of your .sys file


Then, you will need to burn all this back to a CD, and make the CD bootable. You can do this using Bart's Boot Image Extractor to pull the boot image from original Windows XP CD, then use that image as an image to make the CD bootable


This worked for me, to get me past the text based bit of the setup, and into Windows. Once there, install the RAID driver from the original CD, otherwise you'll have absolutely terrible IDE performance!!


Confused

 

[EeyoreX]

why would it be a waste? i probably costs less to make a cd than it does a floppy disk

You don't think ~500k on any CD media is a waste? Even the "business card" CDs hold only about 150MB or so. I'd rather have a floppy. Even if it wasn't a waste, the issue is still the same. Barring some creative fixes, like the post above mine, people sometimes still need a floppy drive. I appluad people that do all the work needed and find ways around this. They are truely creative and innovative. Personally, I'd rather spend the ~$10 and call it even. Chances are, if I am reinstalling Windows, I had my case open to install some significant new hardware (ie, a new motherboard) it is hardly difficult for me to plug the floppy in for the install and then remove it when I am done. I seriously doubt the floppy is really going to go away that soon. Sure, Dell sells several systems sans floppy. Of course, Dell sells to users that don't upgrade their BIOS, that don't replace motherboards, etc. I am simply saying the floppy is gonna be here for a while, and sometimes you will need it.

I don't have a floppy drive on ANY system, don't need them anymore ...

From the original poster. Obviously, he did need it. And the fix from above won't be overly helpful, as he needs an OS to boot to, and copy everything, and edit things, at least on his own PC. Of course, if he has a DOS/Windows 9x boot floppy, he can likely do what he needs to do, to avoid needing the floppy drive...

\Dan