Do I really need a floppy drive to setup Raid?

[gvguy39]

I currently own a WD 640gb sata drive and have a 2nd coming with exact same manufacturer model #. I have never set up a raid 0 array before, much less a bootable one. I am pretty savvy installing windows, installing with minimal hardware, 1 stick of ram, etc... but always on 1 single harddrive. The manual for my Motherboard was written, apparently, right about the same time that Vista was coming out. That being said, it's not clear in the instructions if they are talking about XP or Vista, as far as the NV Raid drivers during the OS install. I will be installing Vista Home Premium (64bit) on a raid 0 of two identical drives. I understand the settings in the bios to define the array. I have posted this question in a forum for my MB... but the response I got from a moderator (no less!) was why would you want to install Vista anyway? You can understand my dismay! MY QUESTION IS: After I have set the parameters in the Bios, and it comes times to install the actual OS (Vista, in my case), do I really need the NV Raid drivers off the chipset CD that came with my MB or will Vista already have the drivers? I can't find the answer to that anywhere... If so... can I put them on a USB thumb drive (that I have used to flash the bios several times) or do I really have to buy a floppy drive to install the drivers? I can't remember the last time I used a floppy drive!

[gvguy39]

I think I have found the answer to my question... doing a web search outside of OC-forums pointed to a thread in this forum, no less!

http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=552131

It's as if this post is exactly the same as mine. Sorry for that. If anyone can foresee any problems or concerns I should know before I try all the above, please let me know, as I only have 1 computer at home and it will be a pain to use someone else's computer to access the internet to trouble shot.

[redduc900]

Vista may or may not natively support your particular NV RAID chipset. If during Setup Vista doesn't see the array, then you'll need to supply RAID drivers via thumb drive, CD/DVD, floppy, or HDD partition. You can download the latest NV driverset (nForce drivers) for your particular chipset directly from nVidia just in case, then extract the drivers to one of the aforementioned devices to be used during the install. Assuming you'll be installing Vista to the MSI K9N Neo-F (nForce 550 MCP chipset) listed in your sig., here's a direct link to the 15.25 nForce driverset for Vista x64, which contains the latest SATARAID Driver (v10.3.0.46) WHQL...

http://www.nvidia.com/object/nforce_vista64_15.25.html

[gvguy39]

Great... thanks for the link. I'm just glad that I can use something other than a floppy drive to suppy the raid drivers.

[gvguy39]

It worked flawlessly... I ended up installing Windows 7 RC instead to play around with it a little. Love Win 7 so far.