SATA, RAID, a new Windows Installation, and Floppys...

[Barabajagal]

As anyone who's used a SATA drive as their primary hard drive, you need to install RAID drivers before installing Windows. I just got my older sister a new SATA hard drive, PCI card, and Molex->SATA power adapter. Now, everything's dandy, except to install the drivers, you need a god damn piece of shit floppy disk. Of course, she has not a single floppy in the house, because they're legacy piece of crap disks. I've been over here three times now, trying to get her "new" (now three months old, but never used) SATA drive to work. Can anyone tell me if it's possible to install SATA drivers in Windows XP's text-based, boot installation without using a floppy?

[Explicit]

As anyone who's used a SATA drive as their primary hard drive, you need to install RAID drivers before installing Windows. I just got my older sister a new SATA hard drive, PCI card, and Molex->SATA power adapter. Now, everything's dandy, except to install the drivers, you need a god damn piece of shit floppy disk. Of course, she has not a single floppy in the house, because they're legacy piece of crap disks. I've been over here three times now, trying to get her "new" (now three months old, but never used) SATA drive to work. Can anyone tell me if it's possible to install SATA drivers in Windows XP's text-based, boot installation without using a floppy?

My friend and I ran into that exact same problem when he first got his Seagate 400gb hard drive.  Sorry I can't tell you anything about it right now, but I'll be sure to ask him when he gets off work.

[Barabajagal]

Well, I finally found a floppy... so I guess it's not important anymore, though I'd like to know for future use...

[MyndFyre]

As anyone who's used a SATA drive as their primary hard drive, you need to install RAID drivers before installing Windows. I just got my older sister a new SATA hard drive, PCI card, and Molex->SATA power adapter. Now, everything's dandy, except to install the drivers, you need a god damn piece of shit floppy disk. Of course, she has not a single floppy in the house, because they're legacy piece of crap disks. I've been over here three times now, trying to get her "new" (now three months old, but never used) SATA drive to work. Can anyone tell me if it's possible to install SATA drivers in Windows XP's text-based, boot installation without using a floppy?

Windows Vista installed on my SATA RAID 0 configuration without any drivers.

You must use a floppy in XP.  Vista supports a floppy, CD, or USB drive.

[Barabajagal]

Found a way not to use a floppy... Slipstreaming! It's nice to know they added some sensible features to the Vista installation, though.

[LordNevar]

You can get the SCSI/SATA disk to install a 3rd party SCSI/SATA driver from your motherboard manufacturers website. Windows Vista however has a comprehensive list of install drivers based on all brands of SCSI/SATA drives so is able to perform a complete install without the use of a floppy disk. If you do however plan on installing on a Win98 platform or WinME for whatever reason, you will need to install to that drive after you have already installed a previous installation, and recognized the drive. Or you can get a mounting disk that uses the Vista process from I believe www.bootdisk.com. This disk will allow you to startup and run any windows installation via the floppy to any SCSI/SATA drive.

[Explicit]

I managed to talk to my friend, and he said that he pretty much went with the floppy disk approach, too.  Sorry,