Floppy drive just for RAID sucks

[pauljuno]

Sorry for the rant, but just can't believe that I need to install a floppy in order to get RAID up and running ... but that appears to be the case. Now I need to stop by the office supply store on way home just to pick up some floppies as I've stopped using them a long time ago. Just glad I still had one in my closet that I didn't toss for my new build.

Has anyone found a decent work-around to the floppy?

Just curious, Thanks!

 

[badge]

Sorry for the rant, but just can't believe that I need to install a floppy in order to get RAID up and running ... but that appears to be the case. Now I need to stop by the office supply store on way home just to pick up some floppies as I've stopped using them a long time ago. Just glad I still had one in my closet that I didn't toss for my new build.

Has anyone found a decent work-around to the floppy?

Just curious, Thanks!

USB floppy drive.

 

[Nitro350Z]

I'm not sure if its possible for XP, but I think I've heard That Vista will support Raid Drivers from a USB Thumb drive, basically eliminating the need for floppies.

I dont really care about the the topic, I like my Floppy, comes in hady once in a long while.

 

[badge]

Yeah, I bought a usb floopy for the purpose and could not get it to work, but was told it was possible. Likely I was doing something wrong, but this is the very reason why I question whether USB devices work without the usb drivers being installed first from the MB CD after the OS is installed?

 

[dean7]

I'm not sure if its possible for XP, but I think I've heard That Vista will support Raid Drivers from a USB Thumb drive, basically eliminating the need for floppies.

I dont really care about the the topic, I like my Floppy, comes in hady once in a long while.

Yeah, it's nice to have a type of media that works 40% of the time, and 60% of the time messes up your data. Without things like this, technology would be boring and "predictable" and whatnot. Good call

 

[Nitro350Z]

I didnt know the stats were that bad.

But still, its a usefull format to get small files(like documents) off of old computers, that and lots of good utils are available for floppy(but there is now discs like the UBCD that contains all these apps on one disc)

besides, I've never had a problem when useing good floppies and a good floppy drive, that and I have ~1k + floppies laying around if I ever need them(got most of them for free, so meh)

 

[PCcashCow]

Vista, thankfully, was able to pick up my Raid card without any action. But I'm pretty sure that it does have other media options for devices. Windows 2k3 R2 has it as well. It's not really anyone fault but manufactures for not setting an IEEE standard.

 

[koolaidkitten]

just integrate it onto your windows install disk

 

[pauljuno]

Thanks for the feedback guys! I actually did stop after work to buy a USB floppy drive and of course, it didn't work

Then went to the closet for the ol' floppy that I pulled from a Dell. Oh yeah, of course this is custom hardware and will not install into a normal case. Doh! So, I found something that would be a suitable shelf to hold it on and installed it. Built the driver disk and started installation again, this time it worked fine until after the format at which point the system said that the disk apparently was having problems, grrrrr. Ok, build another disk and this time it finishes.

So ... my very first build from scratch is now almost complete. Here are the specs just for your info...

ASUS P5N32 SLI SE Deluxe
Core 2 Duo X6800
2 x nVidia GeForce 7900GTX's (Only 1 card installed at the moment)
2 X 150Gb WD Raptor 10000RPM
2 Gig Corsair DDR2-800 (Only 1 stick installed so far)
Dell 2407 Monitor
Saitek Keyboard
Logitech G5 Gaming Mouse

Downloading 3DMark06 now and I'm going to test with the current set-up then install the other components and test to see what the effect is.

I'll never buy Dell again!

Thanks again!

 

[tecknob]

Just for the record, I went through the same thing when I did a custom build with a RAID0 set up. I had to yank a floppy from an old box and throw it in just to do the install. The only thing Windows will recognize when its being installed is a standard floppy drive and it will only look to the floppy drive for the correct RAID HDD driver files.

By the way, I have a nice black case - except for the floppy drive which is beige. Yes, I could have pulled the floppy out - but I didn't....