reformatting alienware laptop, trouble with raid driver

A

ahdrum

Geek Trainee
My new alienware laptop came with vista, and it sucks so I am installing XP on it. It has a raid 0 on it, so i need to install the raid driver before installing xp. It wants the driver from the A drive, but it is a laptop without a floppy drive. Does anybody know how i can successfully install the raid driver?
 
ahdrum said:
how i can successfully install the raid driver?
Click to expand...
can you retrieve the drivers from the vista instalation or have you already formated the drive[ot]to get rid of vista[/ot]can you find the drivers on the net ?
can you burn the downloaded drivers to CD / DVD on another machine ?
 
i have the driver, i am just not sure how to load the raid driver while setting up xp when there is no floppy drive....alienware had to do it, so im guessing there is a way.
 
ahdrum said:
m guessing there is a way.
Click to expand...

yeah v v easy, just burn the drivers to a CD / DVD on another system[ot]when XP asks for the drivers, remove the XP CD and insert the CD / DVD you burned, then replace XP CD in the drive[/ot]

Edit: most common burning software is Nero
 
i got it to work with a usb floppy drive, luckily my bios supports it. thanks for the info anyway though.
 
actually, it didnt work. It worked at first, but after it completed formatting, it asked me to put in the disk for the RAID driver, then press enter. It was already in there, so i pressed enter, and it didnt work. I tried this several times and it didnt work. I started everything over and it did the same thing. I decided to call alienware, but aparently they are not allowed to sell the XP disks anymore, only Vista :( . Anyway, the tech guy there said that another customer had a similar problem and by replacing the external floppy with a well-recognized brand it worked perfectly. right now I have a Dynex (or something like that), and it was suggested to get an NEC or sony external floppy. Think it will work?
 
ahdrum said:
it was suggested to get an NEC or sony external floppy. Think it will work?
Click to expand...

you don't need a floppy,just burn the driver to a CD / DVD on another system and replace the XP CD with the driver CD when prompted by the XP install, then enter the path to your CD drive (usually D:\path\to\CD) then insert the XP CD when driver installation has finished
 
ahdrum said:
just to clarify, you can do this in the Pre-OS setup right?
Click to expand...
yeah, on another system (a different PC with a CD / DVD writer installed & working) are you familiar with burning files to CD / DVD's ?
 
i decided to make a slipstream cd of windows xp with the raid driver included on the cd. We will see if it works.
 
Creation Procedure For Non-Boot Raid 1 on Alienware Aurora
(set up through the hardware)

> install HDs for the RAID (should be identical)
> press F2 during startup
> click on Integrated Services
> change AHCI to Raid
> click on Advanced BIOS, OptionROM Display Screen > enter > Display
> F10
> reboot--when the Raid controller flashes during startup, click Ctrl-i
> create Raid volume - name it, select Raid1/mirrored, select drives, volume
size to max, create volume (ok to overwrite disks)
> escape, reboot
> start > rightclick Computer > Manage > Storage > Disk Management
> right click the Raid at the bottom
> select New Simple Volume... (ignore notice on the next screen)
> follow the wizard, choose to format the disk
> done!
 
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