SATA Install and RAID driver disk

[deepsea]

I'm upgrading my OS to XP, and my floppy drive has died. I'm using an Asus K8V SE with the VIA RAID controller. The RAID array dies when I overclock anyway, so I'm thinking about swapping back to two independent SATA drives. Does anyone know if I'll still need the RAID driver disk to use the Windows install? The SATA drives are still tied to the VIA controller rather than to the standard mobo connectors.

thanks.

[floppybootstomp]

You should be OK booting from the XP CD and installing the controller drivers afterwards. I've done that before. Does XP see the SATA drives OK during install process?

If XP has support for your controller it will install it's own drivers to support it intially, but you'd be better off installing the dedicated drivers after install.

[EQuito]

Does anyone know if I'll still need the RAID driver disk to use the Windows install? I hardly doubt XP has native drivers for such a new SB (VIA VT8237) so the answer would be yes, you need to press F6 to install the driver.

[floppybootstomp]

In which case, just try it, if it no work, buy a floppy drive, they're only about a fiver, always handy to have one for situations like this.

[EQuito]

Or he could burn a bootable floppy image and the driver files onto a CD which will be recognized as drive a:\

This guide (http://www.bay-wolf.com/bootcd.htm) is for a bios disk but works for just about evetything else.

[floppybootstomp]

/me bites lip and thinks that really is a rather splendid idea.....