== ABSTRACT ==

With respect to Highpoint® RocketRaid® 464 RAID cards, this text describes potential methods to deal with RAID BIOS boot issues and integrate drivers into your Windows 2000® or Windows XP® Install CD without the use of a floppy-drive.  This text assumes the reader to be an average Windows user with some basic computer skills.  The information presented can be applied to a wide range of PCI RAID cards (such as other Highpoint® cards) and on-board RAID devices.  The sources for this information are semi-random bits and pieces from the Internet, including Microsoft® Corporation's own help site.  NO GUARANTEES ARE GIVEN AS TO THE ACCURACY OR FEASIBILITY OR RELIABILITY OF THE PROCEDURES OR INFORMATION LISTED IN THIS DOCUMENT.   USE AT YOUR OWN RISK.

== RAID CAN SOMETIMES BE FRUSTRATING AT FIRST ==

You just bought that lovely RocketRaid 464® and after plugging it in........ no Highpoint® BIOS screen, nothing. 

    You then run to the manual and possibly get nowhere.

Sounds like it's time to initiate an RMA request, eh? 

    Hold your horses, not so fast.

These cards are good RAID cards, from most accounts, but they can be somewhat picky and obtuse on older (or even newer) equipment.

    Let's tackle this step by step.

== THE ROCKETRAID® BIOS THAT WON'T BOOT ==

First thing you have to check is PCI slot compatibility.  The RocketRaid® can apparently handle at least PCI 2.1, and your motherboard should have PCI 2.1 slots or greater.  Second thing you have to check is your motherboard's BIOS settings.  This can vary per motherboard and some BIOSes give you more control than others.  In some BIOSes, you'll have to find a way to "dumb down" the PCI settings in order to allow the RAID card to assert itself on the PCI bus properly.  This may be the subject of another guide but for the moment, the usual procedure is to load up fail-safe settings on the motherboard's BIOS and proceed from there.  This simple procedure takes care of many RAID BIOS boot issues when it comes to Highpoint® RAID cards.  Later on, you can scale up and tweak your PCI settings one by one until you find the one which blocks the bootstrapping of the RAID card's BIOS.  Also, in your motherboard's BIOS please remember to set your first boot drive to "SCSI" (or "RAID" if listed) if you intend to boot your operating system from the RAID array.

If you've conquered any potential BIOS issues, we can move on.  If not, stop here and contact the manufacturer of your RAID card/device for assistance.

== THE "F6 LOAD/FLOPPY DISK THAT DOESN'T WORK" AND/OR "OH GOD, I DON'T HAVE A FLOPPY DRIVE" SCENARIO ==

Installing Windows on a RAID array, for example, is one of the few instances in modern times where a 3.5" floppy drive is almost an absolute requirement.  You might know the routine already : Windows Installer comes up with something like "Press F6 if you have any additional drivers to load" and one complies as best as one can.  But ....

What do you do if the RAID card's floppy disk and the Windows Installer (CD) do not get along?

What do you do if you simply do not have a 3.5" floppy drive?

Do you run to the merchant and ask for your money back?

== LOOK BEFORE YOU LEAP ==

You could ask the merchant / manufacturer for assistance at this point.... but personally, I would try the "slipstream" approach first.

[[ What follows assumes that you have some basic knowledge of how to create/manipulate files and directories under Windows, how to extract data from Windows Install CD, and how to rebuild said CD with your modifications intact.  For example, a popular CD building tool is UltraISO®.  If you don't know how to do this, find out how!  Use your favorite search engine and appropriate search terms.  The web is a vast storehouse of information ]].

== SLIPSTREAMING, IT'S NOT JUST FOR SCIENCE FICTION ANYMORE ==

We can sidestep this floppy drive issue entirely by "slipstreaming" the drivers into your Windows Install CD.

How do we do this?

There are several ways but one of the more popular and concise ways to do it (at least for Windows 2000® and Windows XP®), is as follows :

1) Extract/Copy all the data on the Windows Install CD to your harddrive or other workable storage device.  Naturally, you must preserve the directory structure of the Windows Install CD when copied over.  Keep the following directories/folders in mind : \I386 and \$OEM\$1 (if present).

2) Find the WINNT.SIF file.  It should be inside directory "I386" as seen from the root directory of your copied_CD data.  You can type the following in "Command Prompt" in order to find it on the disc.

    CD \     ...followed by...    DIR WINNT.SIF /a /s

3) Load up your favorite text editor and edit the WINNT.SIF file and add the following section if not already present.

[Unattended]

    OemPreinstall=Yes
    OemPnPDriversPath="DIRNAME"

"DIRNAME" is simply the directory/folder name of your choice.  You must create this directory/folder with same name as listed in "DIRNAME" under \$OEM\$1.  For example, if I choose HOTFIXES as my "DIRNAME" then I would set up the following :

   OemPnPDriversPath="HOTFIXES"

The directory/folder referenced by the Windows Installer would therefore be \$OEM\$1\HOTFIXES starting from the root directory.  Naturally, if \$OEM$ and \$OEM$\$1 don't exist for whatever strange reason, you must create them first !

On some OEM implementations you will see [Unattended] section already present (see below), in which case all you have to do is add the OemPnPDriversPath="DIRNAME" tag to the section.

[Unattended]
    UnattendMode=FullUnattended
    OemPreinstall=Yes
    FileSystem = ConvertNTFS
    Repartition=No
    WaitForReboot=No
    DriverSigningPolicy=Ignore
    TargetPath=\WINNT
    OemSkipEula=Yes

== ARE WE THERE YET? ==

No, not yet !

To summarize, by now we should have WINNT.SIF modified, as seen previously, and pointed to load drivers from \$OEM\$1\DIRNAME , where DIRNAME is the name of the directory/folder you've created for the purposes of this "slipstream" procedure.

Now we need those pesky drivers! ...

4) Take out the RocketRAID 464® Boot floppy.  Go into the Windows 2000® or Windows XP® directory on the floppy disk and copy the hpt374.sys, hpt374.inf, and hpt374.cat files to \$OEM\$1\DIRNAME

5) Now, according to some wisdom on the internet, this next step may or may not be necessary.  However, just to cover ourselves, let's take hpt374.sys, compress it with makecab (using filename extension .SY_ ), and copy the compressed file to \I386 .  Makecab is included with Windows and should be available from command line prompt. The usual syntax is MAKECAB SOURCENAME DESTINATIONNAME , as follows:

    MAKECAB hpt374.sys hpt374.SY_  ... and the resultant hpt.374.SY_ file would then be copied to \I386

== SERIOUSLY, ARE WE THERE YET? ==

We're almost done!  One more file to modify, and that file is TXTSETUP.SIF which should be inside \I386

6) Somewhere in TXTSETUP.SIF you must add the tags and info for [SourceDisksFiles], [HardwareIdsDatabase], [SCSI.load], and [SCSI]. The usual convention on this is to add this data to the end of TXTSETUP.SIF (but right before the end of file marker, which looks like a filled-in square under notepad).  For the RocketRaid 464®, the following information suffices, as listed with various web-searchable sources :

[SourceDisksFiles]
hpt374.sys = 1,,,,,,4_,4,1,,,1,4

[HardwareIdsDatabase]
PCI\VEN_1103&DEV_0008 = "hpt374"

[SCSI.load]
hpt374 = hpt374.sys,4

[SCSI]
hpt374 = "RocketRAID 464 Controller for Win2000"

Other RAID cards / devices require different info and sometimes this is very easy to pull out of the driver's .INF file or TXTSETUP.OEM file and sometimes it is not.  Each RAID card / device is a separate animal.

7) Reassemble the modified Windows Install CD data into a CD again.  An application such as UltraISO® may be used for this purpose.  Make sure the reassembled CD is BOOTable.

8) Commence the install process utilizing the RAID card / device / array slated to receive Windows.  Disconnect all other non-essential drives for safety against accidental data corruption.

Finally, keep in mind that the Windows Installer in Windows 2000®, Windows XP®, and even Windows 2003® might present difficulties if asked to install on a partition greater than 137 GB.  RAID arrays and singular hard drives routinely exceed this figure nowadays (2006 AD).  I suggest to play it safe and install to a smaller partition.  You can always change partition size later with third party software, for example, such as Partition Magic®.

Cheers and Good Luck.

DT - 2006