Install SATA controllers without floppy drive???

  It has nothing to do with Dell. It is the motherboard manufacturer that isn't including onboard support for the SATA RAID drivers. An external floppy drive is the only other option if one is not provided with the tower. Only a few aftermarket mobo's have the onboard sata support at this time, Dell's supplier (Intel) is not one of them.

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Thanks. So the promise SATA controller driver on Dell Support is just for systems purchased with RAID option, right? (they have 1 more PCI controller card?)

      SATA RAID is available on the boards Dell offers this feature with and doesn't involve a PCI RAID controller card.  You need the floppy drive to install drivers during installation of Window's operating systems  because of the inability of XP to detect a raid array during the install. Thus the F6 key to instruct XP to get drivers from the floppy drive. Some of the newer mobo's have the sata drivers hardwired into the chipset eliminating the floppy drive.

     Check the documentation for your mobo to see if it is RAID capable.

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I see no info about this in the manual: 

<ADMIN NOTE: Broken link has been removed from this post by Dell>

Anyone knows which type of onboard SATA controller Dim8300 uses? (Promise FastTrack or SATA-TX...?)

I just had to do this to reinstall the OS on my 8400 and partition the drive.  Just to confirm that, despite what the manual says (it's plain wrong) you need to install the drivers whether or not you have RAID hard drives because the motherboard is RAID capable.  You extract them from the Resource disk.  And you have to change the SATA operations setting in the BIOS from RAID/ACHI to RAID/SATA.

I don't know what you can do if you don't have a floppy drive (I ordered my 8400 with one).  I did discover in this process that Dell does have Recovery Disks for the 8400 which they will send you for free.  I assume that they will work without the need for the RAID driver install, so if you are willing to live with all the DELL and 3rd party junk that comes preloaded, you could reinstall the OS that way.

I fdisked my hard drive on my 8400 and ran into the same problem... I was able to install xp after changing the Drive (BIOS) from Raid/AHCI to Raid/ATA but did not install (via F6) the Raid drivers.  Windows XP showed my chipset was 82801FB.  I then could not install the Intel Application Accelerator (wrong chipset - it needs 82801FR or ER), nor could I change the bios back to the "factory" default of AHCI. If I did change it, I would get a blue screen 7B stop, the same error I was getting when I tried to install an IDE hard drive unsuccessfully (seemingly unrelated issue??).  I reinstalled XP after changing the BIOS to Raid/ATA and this time I installed via F6 SATA RAID drivers that I created off the Dell Tools CD.  Same issue - my chipset is reported as 82801FB and I cannot install the Intel Application Accelerator, and am now thinking about returning my 8400 fearing I am not getting the most from my SATA. 

I had checked dell for an updated BIOS, but the only one there was A01, so I tried it anyways and it took it - "updated" successfully.  Normally you get stopped when you try and update the same version bios, but I dont think it changed anything.

It appears Dell has different SATA Raid drivers posted in downloads... reinstalling windows now using F6 with R78496.  The new drivers state AHCI and FR!! I will change the BIOS to AHCI and proceed and report back.

Message Edited by KevinHC on 08-16-2004 05:07 PM

I had an idea for the floppy-impaired today.  I have no idea if it will work or not, but it might be worth a try.  On Fred Langa's site, he indicated that USB pen drives, makes the computer thinks that they are floppies.  The 8400 can read USB floppy drives.  As low memory pen drives are pretty cheap,  perhaps one could try to buy or borrow a pen drive, extract the RAID drivers to it, and try to connect it at the F6 press. 

If anyone tries it, please report back on your results.

I reinstalled (over itself) Windows two times yesterday.  I think I got it down pat now.   (Except that I did not write down the steps and will not go through it again just to check the right order of things, but I'm sure you'll figure it out if things in different order, or I missed something obvious).  Here are the tricks.  Assuming that you already have the RAID drivers extracted to a floppy.  First go into BIOS Setup and change the SATA Operation type to AHCI/RAID.  Then with the OS CD in your CD drive, reboot to the CD drive (using F12).  If you don't catch it and it reboots to Windows, you will get a BSOD.

Then press F6.  You will get a (blue) screen asking if you have more drivers to add.  At this point you put your floppy with the drivers in your floppy drive and you press "S".   The  setup continues the install.   At some point you will be asked on a Black screen which drivers you want to install.  Choose RAID/AHCI, not RAID/SATA.  At some point you will be asked whether you want to add another driver.  Here press Enter, not "S" because you have only one set of drivers to install.

Then you get to chose to enter the Recovery Console or Install Windows.   Choose the selection to Install windows.  You then have the choice of the reinstall or a reformat and clean install.  Choose the one you want. 

BTW, my first install stalled at the 34 minute spot.  After 10 minutes of no change, I shut down the 8400 by holding in the on/off button.  I turned it back on and the install picked up right where it left off.  At another point in both installs I got a screen that was divided into 4 quarters with the left top quarter ended up on the lower right.  Just toggling the monitor off and on fixed it.

Good luck.

   I should have known better and checked here first...  HELP!

   I bought a second 80GB HD for my New Dell 8400 to create a Raid0 Boot.  I followed the book and changed to Raid0 losing all my data but I was going to install my own XP Pro over the factory installed XP Home.

   I thought I had read the book and all enough to feel confident the new Interl Rom would handle the Booting and such... Well as we seem to be finding the fact is the MB and Raid is not allowing me this option without a floppy.  I DONT HAVE A FLOPPY!

   I pray they have a non-floppy solution.... It makes no sense to sell a machine with a bootable Raid controller but no way to use it.   If anyone knows of anyway to proceed please let me know... Thanks!

 

 

 

 

Did you see my previous message about using a cheap Pen Drive?  Or you could use a USB floppy.

Same boat here.  Had to buy a USB floppy drive.  It worked fine.

I have completed my XP install successfully using the latest raid drivers. 

Oddly, my good ole trusted 3 1/2 floppy drive did not show in my fresh windows install; XP found it after about the 10th reboot.  Bring back the dualing 5 1/4's!

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@bobjbkln wrote:
Did you see my previous message about using a cheap Pen Drive?  Or you could use a USB floppy.

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I tried the pen drive. The problem I had was that the Windows XP setup did not regonize it as a floppy device even though later on in the setup it did detect it as a mass storage device. I think the pen drive would have to be partitioned to 1.44mb but I was unable to even partition mine.

I'm also working on a solution here