rpelletier

I wonder if there are any plans to create a business-legal license for nLite? If it works as well as you all seem to think, it'd be worth it...

While that might be an easy way out, I think I'll contact the server manufacturer first and ask them how the heck they expect a guy to set this thing up without a floppy drive. For all I know, they may have already integrated the required driver into their DISK1 (it's a branded DISK1, so who knows?). If that doesn't work, I'll contact the owner of nLite, as you suggest...

Well I guess that answers that. I had no idea that use on a business system was forbidden... Floppy drives are cheap - that is true. However, many new computers (servers and workstations alike) are being shipped without them. That's not to say you can just grab one and install it - there is no floppy controller on the motherboard. Sure, you can get a USB floppy drive, but there's no telling until you get it whether the system's BIOS will recognize it and give it that all-important A:\ label that Windows OS's need to install the Third-party driver. (Sigh!) This business really sux sometimes!!

Thanks for your replies... It's been a messy day with this server. HP shipped it with only one of the two RAID hard disks, and I went ahead and prepped it, thinking I could just add the other disk later and synch it up. Wrong - with this particular SATA RAID controller, the RAID configuration wipes out all existing data on the disks. That's how I discovered that the drives are currently using the controller as a standard atapi drive. Anyway, it's an HP ML150 G3 server with an on-board SATA RAID controller. The textsetup.oem file calls it: "Adaptec SATA Drive v1.00 (Windows 32 bit for 2000/XP/2003)" I figured if it was being loaded, I could press F6 anyway, and before I put the disk in the A: drive it would show the drivers already loaded and offer to load more. However, the list of drivers loaded was empty - the atapi driver wasn't there either. I'm wondering if the RAID actually has to be enabled in order for this thing to reject the atapi drive and look for something else... No matter what, I will need to install the driver. I'm trying to do it without having to try it first (using the nLite CD) and then running out to find a floppy drive just to install the driver... This nLite looks great for this sort of thing - I'm eager to play around with it and see what it can do. While the integrated driver feature brought me here, there are lots of interesting features... **** UPDATE **** I figured I had to reformat anyway, so I ran through the install. While formatting, it said "Formatting DISK 1 on atapi..." or something to that affect. So, I guess these disks appear like a standard disk drive unless the RAID is created first in the BIOS. I'll know more when I get the second drive. Thanks for your replies...

I just got a brand new HP server. It has a SATA RAID controller (on-board), which has its own driver, but will also use a standard atapi driver. Instructions say to use a floppy disk (you know, Press F6...) to install during setup, but the blasted server has no floppy drive. (Stupid HP!) And HP, in their infinite wisdom, shipped the server withonly one drive (contrary to the specs on the web site) with a partially preloaded install script. I can't just add a second drive, becasue the SATA controller won't retain the ionformation on the existing drive - it wipes it out completely! So, I have resigned myself to redoing from the beginning... If I use the atapi driver, I get no RAID. Without a floppy drive, I gotta use nLite to create an install Disk1 with the driver integrated. How will I know (before I reformat the blasted thing) if it actually is using the driver I integrated or if it's using the standard atapi driver? Can anyone advise me?