Raid drivers: Off USB thumb drive? Other Raid Q's

Vagabond102 · Mar 15, 2008

I don't have a floppy drive. For some reason, for the last couple builds I can't get floppy drives to work. It's an odd thing, I can get them working on any machine but mine.

See sig for current configuration. I am wanting to add 2 500GB disks and setup a raid 0 array. (I don't really have any need for redundancy, though I might give a try at a matrix array) This is my very very first experience with RAID, though I've been a PC Tech for years now.

Question 1: Can I use my USB thumb drive to hold the drivers needed upon windows install? (The F6 option)

Any helpful links on step by step instructions for configuring a P35 DS3R for raid using the ICH9R would be helpful. I've done some reading, including the stickies, but they give general info...I understand the concept but I don't understand the actual process. I know learning by experience is the best, but this is my only PC, if I fail, I can't get online to read.

I think I understand, but not sure:

1: Install (SATA) HD'd on Intel Headers
2: Enable RAID in the BIOS
3: Boot from windows CD
4: F6 durring install
5: Point to raid drivers

At some point it should reboot, I hit ctrl-I or something to get into the raid bios. Tell it the drives and the raid method I want to use. Set up the array using 64k. Finish loading windows and I should have a stripping array.

It sounds pretty straight forward, but I want to cover my basis. Comments?

noegruts · Mar 15, 2008

Vagabond102 said:
Question 1: Can I use my USB thumb drive to hold the drivers needed upon windows install? (The F6 option)

That will work if you're installing Vista, won't work if you're installing anything before that (such as XP).

tuskenraider · Mar 15, 2008

Vagabond102 said:
I don't have a floppy drive. For some reason, for the last couple builds I can't get floppy drives to work. It's an odd thing, I can get them working on any machine but mine.

See sig for current configuration. I am wanting to add 2 500GB disks and setup a raid 0 array. (I don't really have any need for redundancy, though I might give a try at a matrix array) This is my very very first experience with RAID, though I've been a PC Tech for years now.

Question 1: Can I use my USB thumb drive to hold the drivers needed upon windows install? (The F6 option)

Any helpful links on step by step instructions for configuring a P35 DS3R for raid using the ICH9R would be helpful. I've done some reading, including the stickies, but they give general info...I understand the concept but I don't understand the actual process. I know learning by experience is the best, but this is my only PC, if I fail, I can't get online to read.

I think I understand, but not sure:

1: Install (SATA) HD'd on Intel Headers
2: Enable RAID in the BIOS
2.5 Create RAID array
3: Boot from windows CD
4: F6 durring install
5: Point to raid drivers

At some point it should reboot, I hit ctrl-I or something to get into the raid bios. Tell it the drives and the raid method I want to use. Set up the array using 64k. Finish loading windows and I should have a stripping array.

It sounds pretty straight forward, but I want to cover my basis. Comments?

If XP, you can use nLite and slipstream the drivers into a Wndows installation and create a new install disk with those drivers pre-installed.

PhysX · Mar 15, 2008

yep nlite is a dream for drives no problems ever with it

Vagabond102 · Mar 16, 2008

It's XP...I've not move to Vista yet, though I have some cash, I might give it a try; now that it's been out for awhile.

Cool. I might have to give that a try. Hmmm. I guess I could slipstream all my drivers that way. I might play around with it tomorrow.

EDIT: What about an external usb floppy?

noegruts · Mar 16, 2008

Vagabond102 said:
It's XP...I've not move to Vista yet, though I have some cash, I might give it a try; now that it's been out for awhile.

Cool. I might have to give that a try. Hmmm. I guess I could slipstream all my drivers that way. I might play around with it tomorrow.

EDIT: What about an external usb floppy?

Nope. The problem is that pre-Vista the Windows installer doesn't have USB drivers built into it. I suggest you slipstream the drivers into an XP install like was already suggested. I think you'll be much happier with XP than Vista.

But that's just my opinion.

vlaszlo · Mar 16, 2008

External usb drives work well. I used it on my pc, and on friends laptop many times, for XP install + F6.

Moto7451 · Mar 16, 2008

Some BIOSes will use USB drives as emulated floppy drives for such situations.

Vagabond102 · Mar 17, 2008

Cool. Thanks for the responses.

I ended up using nLite to slipstream the raid drivers I needed along with all my other drivers. Seems to be working fine. I didn't have any problems building the array or installing windows. Though, there really isn't anything telling me they are in raid0 except they are 1 volume and the raid bios says so.

=ACID RAIN= · Mar 17, 2008

That's good enough for me to call it RAID

There is one other way to do this, and that is to install XP on a normal drive, install the RAID array as a separate drive in XP, then copy an image of XP from the old drive to the array. This can be done even in windows (while running) with some apps such as paragon hard disk manager. Then you pull the old drive and boot from the array. Since the drivers were installed previously, it works like a charm

It's more in depth, but I just said it for the sake of information.

Vagabond102 · Mar 17, 2008

=ACID RAIN= said:
That's good enough for me to call it RAID

There is one other way to do this, and that is to install XP on a normal drive, install the RAID array as a separate drive in XP, then copy an image of XP from the old drive to the array. This can be done even in windows (while running) with some apps such as paragon hard disk manager. Then you pull the old drive and boot from the array. Since the drivers were installed previously, it works like a charm

It's more in depth, but I just said it for the sake of information.

But it's good information. It's the way I may have done it had I known it could be done successfully. I did think about that, but my instinct was telling me "New hardware, must clean install".

EDIT: And I can confirm that windows will not see a USB thumb drive for the drivers on install. I would have included mass storage/usb drivers in my slip, but I couldn't find what I needed and I didn't have time to search.

Raid drivers: Off USB thumb drive? Other Raid Q's

Vagabond102

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tuskenraider

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PhysX

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vlaszlo

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=ACID RAIN=

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