Lost manufacturer floppy

I recently purchased a new compy, with nForce4 Mobo. Upon installing Windows XP I looked for the floppy that was suppose to be in the chipset box to install raid drivers, but I can't find it. The problem is that the WinXP installation doesn't recognize the HDD, and I am told by a friend that this is caused by the lack of raid drivers (he was able to make a partition though). I went to Gigabyte's web page but all the drivers there didn't fit on a floppy. Help?

My setup:
AMD Athlon 64 3000 Socket 939 Tray +TT TR2 for A
Gigaybyte GA-K8NF-9 nForce4 Socket 939 Motherbo
Kingston KVR400X64C3A-512MB DDR 3200Memory (x2)
Maxtor 160GB 7200rpm 8MB buffer Serial ATA HDD
NEC ND-3520AW 16/16/24/48/16/48 Bulk DVD+-R/RW
LG 16/48 Bilk DVD-ROM
Compucase-HEC Midi Tower CI-6A19 W Front USB 300W
Sapphire Radeon X800XL PCI-e 256MB Retail Video C
Enermax 420W EG425P-VE FMA 20/24Pin Power Supply
Genius SP Q06 Hi-Fi Multimedia 120 Watt Speakers

Thank you.

 

It should be either located on your cd, or at their website. Yes, they may seem to not fit on a floppy, but I'm sure if you were to uncompress that file, you could find a readme.txt file that would explain what needs to be done.

I've done this on giga-byte boards that had an 8 meg sata-raid driver. But, the actuall drivers fit on a floppy. Just got to find them.

 

Hmmm, seems I have to wait 5 mins to edit my posts.

Anyway.....

Do you have the latest bios update on that board? F4 should be the latest. I have a slow connection here, but I'm downloading that driver right now. Unless someone beats me to it, I'll step you through the process of obtaining the raid drivers.

 

The SATA raid drive you are downloading is an installer, so as far as I can see, it doesn't contain the drivers needed for the install at boot.... http://forums.majorgeeks.com/images/smilies/confused.gif

 

Yep, just noticed that. Though, if you mean the initial executable you downloaded, well, that is just a compressed file. But, the driver should be on that CD somewhere.

Egh, I hate being stumped....

 

Eran:

On your cd you should have a directory that lists different sata drivers. Pull one of those onto the root of your floppy disk. Don't just copy the folder over, you need to copy the contents of the folder.

I did find a link, with possible sata/raid drivers that are gigabytes.

http://www.short-media.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=14359

 

Meh, now other problems with old compy are not letting me try to make a floppy again from the utility cd (It doesn't recognize drive A: since we took it out and now it jumps straight to windows without letting me in to BIOS, so I can fix it). Very annoying. I'll get back to new compy's problems tomorrow.

 

Oh, silly me... old compy problem solved . On to the hard part...
How do I now what the right driver is? In the CD it has a folder named "ITE_RAID" in other. does this include SATA? There's also a folder named "SiI" with one named "Diskettes", does this reffer to what I don't have?

 

I don't have the disk in front of me, but does it have any thing of the following:


IAARaid
GigaRaid
Sil
SilRaid
SCSI
Promise 20276 ATA
Promise 20276 Raid
Promise 20265 ATA
Promise 20265 ATA XP
Promise 20265 Raid
Promise 20265 Raid XP
Via 8237 Series ATA
SIS 964 SATA
Nvidia Series ATA XP
Nvidia Series ATA 2K
Sil 3114
Sil 3114 Raid
Sil 3114 Raid 5


wait, wait, wait.... Okay, I reread your post and noticed that you have only listed 1 hdd in your list. If you want raid, you are going to need 2 drives at least.

If you only have 1 drive, then you need to go into your bios and change where it says sata raid (or something like that) to Sata (IDE). You may need to update your BIOS b4 this happens.

Once that is done, you should not have to install any sata-raid drivers.

 

I'm gonna try that in a few hours when I have time. Also, this is connected to HDD recognition, right? Is there any other reason WinXP install, ol' run o' the mill no SP2 WinXP, would not recognise the HDD? Cause I heard somewhere that XP has problams with big drives, that I need to get a newer version. Also, how do I know wether I have the latest BIOS? Lastly, is it hard to add more HDD's, or are the things I do know set in stone (IDE an' that)?
Thanks man

 

Not sure what you mean by "connected to HDD recognition". But, as long as the drive is connected to the board you should be fine.

If you were working with raid, then you would need the driver. But, since you are not, xp will recognise it just fine.

Don't quote me on this. But, you can't format a drive using XP install larger than 32 gigabytes, usning FAT32. NTFS on the other hand has no problems. I personally recommend NTFS over FAT32.

Easy way to check what bios you have is to boot up the system and take note of the first post screen. Above the processor there should be (I can't remember off the top of my head the details) either F1, F2, F3, or F4. If you see F4, then you have the latest and "greatest" bios update.

You can easily add more HDDs later on. Your board supports 8 drives. 4 of them Sata and another 4 IDE (PATA).

Is your system already built?