Any way around avoiding putting a FDD in my rig?

[Royston H]

After a long while I’ve become interested in building a reasonable performing PC (mainly for the good old flight sim) and now want to use the RAID 0 option on my MSI nVidia chipset based motherboard.

In the notes in refers to creating a floppy with the appropriate driver for use during the Windows install process, where you interrupt the install process by specifying that a driver is loaded (S) from floppy is there any way that I can put the driver on CD and load it from that, bearing in mind that the secondary IDE channel has 2 DVD/CD ROM drives on it anyway?

Seems a bit like going backwards to the dark ages just to put in a floppy for this one off occasion!

Thanks in advance for any thoughts

Royston H

 

[Ham]

You could nLite teh driver into a windows disk. Or turn a USB drive into a fake floppy. Never had too do either myself but both methods are tried and tested.

 

[Royston H]

Thanks, USB acting as fake floppy sounds simplest way

 

[cuprasport]

i use a fdd in my rig and remove it when not in use as i hate ide cables

 

[PV5150]

After a long while I’ve become interested in building a reasonable performing PC (mainly for the good old flight sim) and now want to use the RAID 0 option on my MSI nVidia chipset based motherboard.

In the notes in refers to creating a floppy with the appropriate driver for use during the Windows install process, where you interrupt the install process by specifying that a driver is loaded (S) from floppy is there any way that I can put the driver on CD and load it from that, bearing in mind that the secondary IDE channel has 2 DVD/CD ROM drives on it anyway?

Seems a bit like going backwards to the dark ages just to put in a floppy for this one off occasion!

Thanks in advance for any thoughts

Royston H

Hi Royston and welcome to OC3D. I hate having to use floppy drives, so if I need to make one for my RAID setup I use Virtual Floppy. I use Nlite to make a slipstreamed install of WinXP and install the RAID drivers from virtual floppy. It makes the process so much easier imo, but if you need any help don't hesitate to ask.

 

[Mullet]

PV...this looks interesting!

So could I effectively setup file on a USB flash drive as a floppy drive and install my raid drivers from there when doing a clean install? Also, am very interested in making an nlite slipstreamed install of XP (with the RAID drivers built in) can you help me set that up mate?

Cheers

 

[PV5150]

Yeah sure mate. Start a new thread in the storage section of the forum and I'll get something up for you. It'll have to be tomorrow though I'm afraid, as I have a splitting headache and am about to head off to bed.

 

[jamena]

there's also using a CD-rom as an FDD emulator. I had to do that yesterday to flash the bios (the FDD I did have at the bottom of a box didn't seem to work anymore)

I found this page very useful: http://www.nu2.nu/bootcd/

The "cleanboot" thing didn't work for me but the "single boot image" one did.

http://www.nu2.nu/bootcd/#cdromsi

all worked smoothly.

Dunno if it'll help you?

 

[PV5150]

Moved thread to a more appropriate area of the forum

 

[Mullet]

Moved thread to a more appropriate area of the forum

Thanks mate...

Looking forward to being enlightened re. Nlite...

 

[nathan]

i've always used usb floppy drivers, seem the least hassle. But nlite is good.