Create Raid array.. w/o floppy?

Alright, ill try to make this as short as possible.
Last couple of days for me have been hell.
Ive been putting off a much needed format and clean install of windows for too long, and when a couple of days ago my internet just stop working, i spent a bit of time messing with it and couldnt figure it out. Anyway, so reinstall windows here we go. All the meanwhile my system is running 2 80 gig maxtors in Raid 0. This was setup the 'normal' way, upon windows install you need to press f6 then toss the driver disk in and off you go.

Heres the problem now though, i got rid of my floppy drive on my pc. Aside from the fact that i hate floppies and i think everyone should get rid of them as they have no use bla bla blah etc,... however i feel like an idiot saying this when i spent the last 4 days trying to get around a problem which could have been easily dealt with if i had a floppy drive.
Primary reason for getting rid of the floppy was at one time i was messing with the floppy cable and i think i broke off one of the pins on the cable adapter on the motherboard. After that my floppy did not work too well.

Alright, this all boils down to: ive spent the last 4 days trying to come up with ways to fool windows xp sp1 install into thinking that a floppy exists with the highpoint raid controller drivers, such as creating cd boot disks, ram drives with the files on them, and a whole bunch of other ways. It does not make sense to me b/c the bios raid utility loads and checks the array, and when in dos after using win98 boot disk, any partition program sees my array. i can format it, change partitions, anything; but when i try to install windows, it tells me there are no hard drives??!! what the heck. why cant windows be smart for once.

anyway, does anyone have any ideas on how to deal with this? i cant believe that i am the one and only person who's ever attempted to create a raid array and install xp onto one without a floppy.

Sure you can but you will have to burn an new install CD. Go to X:\SUPPORT\TOOLS\DEPLOY & use the SETUPMGR to create a custom unattend install file(WINNT.SIF) that you will place inside the i386 folder. The HELP FILES in the Deploy Folder/Cabinet/Zip will explain the extra folder that you need to create where any specified drivers will go into. So everytime you do a fresh install you wont need a floppy anymore BUT everytime the RAID BIOS is updated with a new BIOS for the MoBo your going to have to create a NEW Install CD so it matches.

I still find it easier to use a floppy. Go out & buy a new cable & floppy drive. That would be the more sensible thing to do.

Great, thank you VERY much for your help and quick reply! Seriously, a life saver!

Hey Sonny, i might have gotten too excited too quick. Ive been messing with the Winxp Setup Manager today as well as have read most of the help files and whatnot. I have yet figured out how it is that I am suppose to burn a new cd with the appropriate drivers. Perhaps, could you be a little more specific and tell me what I could do.

Ive tried to create that unattend file, and what happens is that right when the program is done copying all that I386 stuff, and has created the txt file, all of a sudden the whole folder and what it copied dissappears. I dont get it. I have managed to copy the unattend file, but i dont know what to do with it.

I am presuming I need to edit the contents of the WinXp install cd, something i can do in WinISO and editing it. BUt i do not know where to put the highpoint raid drivers on the disk for them to be loaded.

THanks for any help.

Look HERE for a step by step guide. We discussed this same problem HERE.

Thank you again for your help. I was able to create my own custom xp install with the drivers i needed. it wasnt that difficult.

This looks very interesting..........I might have to try this out.

If you have a little time to spare definately try this out. This can be incredibly useful for someone who does a lot of windows installs. Ie you can make unattended windows install disks that you just pop into the drive and come back like 25min later with the system setup as you like without doing a thing. Its sweet.

WOW thanks a lot this is going to help me a lot.. now it wont be such a pain in the ***..