HELP w/Adaptec SATA/RAID 1210SA

[masda]

I'm very new to this. I have an Adaptec SATA-RAID 1210SA card with a WD Raptor Drive that I would like to install Windows and eventually SuSE on. So, I cannot get a floppy drive to work on my machine, so I have gone the route of slipstreaming drivers into the install. I have read the tutorials on it and tried to adapt it to my specific drivers, but still cannot get it to work.

When setup starts in text mode it loads the drivers fine, but when it says it is starting windows, it just freezes up. It just stops. I have tried on VirtualPC and it went through the whole installation just fine.

I would appreciate any suggestions or help. I was really excited about this, and have spent too many days trying to get this to work.

Thank You.

[Bâshrat the Sneaky]

First of all: of course it went just fine in VPC (or even in VMWare, doesn't matter), because it EMULATES SOME hardware NOT YOUR hardware!

Maybe you would care to tell us how you're installing (from CD, from network, using RIS, using winnt.exe/winnt32.exe) AND what modifications you made to your txtsetup.sif and dosnet.inf?

[masda]

I'm sorry I didnt give enough information. I guess I was hoping some one had already done the same thing with this card. I understand VirtualPC doenst emulate my hardware.

Alright. First I am installing Windows XP Professional SP 2 from CD. I am trying to modify the TXTSETUP.SIF in the i386 directory, as well as the WINNT.SIF.

Here is the list of my drivers:

WIN2000\AAR1210.CAT

WIN2000\AAR1210.SYS

WIN2000\ADHRAID.CAT

WIN2000\ADHRAID.INF

WIN2000\OEMSETUP.INF

WIN2000\TRANS.TBL

HRAIDSK1

TRANS.TBL

TXTSETUP.OEM

I put the in directory: $OEM$\$1\DRIVERS\RAID\AAR1210

while also taking out the ones in the WIN2000 directory and putting them in this directory as well. Its redundancy put I'm unsure how it works.

I put the AAR1210.SYS file into the \i386\ directory.

Here are my entries in TXTSETUP.SIF:

[HardwareIdsDatabase]
PCI\VEN_1095&DEV_0240 = "aar1210"

[SourceDisksFiles]
aar1210.sys = 1,,,,,,_x,4,1

[SCSI.Load]
aar1210 = aar1210.sys,4

[SCSI]
aar1210 = "Adaptec SATA RAID 1210SA"

Here are my entries in WINNT.SIF:

[Data]
AutoPartition=0
MsDosInitiated="0"
UnattendedInstall="Yes"

[Unattended]
UnattendMode=ProvideDefault
OemPreinstall=Yes
OemSkipEula=Yes
DriverSigningPolicy=Ignore
OemPnPDriversPath=drivers\RAID\AAR1210

im unsure what the DOSNET.INF file does

Thank you for your help once again.

[Bâshrat the Sneaky]

What kind of installation are you trying to do? That's one more element I need you to tell me.

And please try this: change

aar1210.sys = 1,,,,,,_x,4,1

to

aar1210.sys = 1,,,,,,_4,4,1

[vulcansforge]

I realize this is a very old post, however I was having trouble getting my 1210SA SATA RAID card working for Windows 2003 installation, and thanks to this page I was able to piece it together. And there was much rejoicing. So, for anyone else who might be searching for this bit of info, I have outlined what worked for me.

I copied everything from the Windows 2003 CD-ROM (disk 1) into a new folder on my C: drive called 2K3_FILES. Then I copied the files from my driver folder downloaded from Adaptec - the one that worked for me was called w2k-xp-2k3_drv_bld10. The link is here:

http://www.adaptec.com/en-US/speed/raid/aa...v_bld10_exe.htm

From the download link there download aar1210sa_w2k-xp-2k3_drv_bld10_exe and run that, it will extract the following files to c:\adaptec\raid. Make sure this folder is empty first, if it already exists. Here are the files:

HRAIDSK1

TRANS.TBL

TXTSETUP.OEM

WIN2000\AAR1210.CAT

WIN2000\AAR1210.SYS

WIN2000\ADHRAID.CAT

WIN2000\ADHRAID.INF

WIN2000\OEMSETUP.INF

WIN2000\TRANS.TBL

Now create the folder structure $OEM$\$1\DRIVERS\RAID\AAR1210 inside the I386 folder which is inside c:\2K3_FILES (or wherever you copied the CD-ROM files to). Also copy the files within the $OEM$\$1\DRIVERS\RAID\AAR1210\WIN2000 folder directly into $OEM$\$1\DRIVERS\RAID\AAR1210, just in case (I did, and it worked for me after many, many failed attempts).

Then, add the following entries under each of the 4 headings HardwareIdsDatabase, SourceDisksFiles, SCSI.Load, and SCSI (THESE HEADINGS ALREADY EXIST IN THE FILE, SO JUST ADD THE ENTRIES) to TXTSETUP.SIF, which is also in the I386 folder in c:\2K3_FILES (or wherever you copied the CD-ROM files to):

[HardwareIdsDatabase]
PCI\VEN_1095&DEV_0240 = "aar1210"

[SourceDisksFiles]
aar1210.sys = 1,,,,,,_4,4,1

[SCSI.Load]
aar1210 = aar1210.sys,4

[SCSI]
aar1210 = "Adaptec SATA RAID 1210SA"

My WINNT.SIF (also in the I386 folder) was like this (replace product key with your own, or else remove the [userData] section completely):

[UserData]
ProductKey="XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX"

[Data]
AutoPartition=0
MSDosInitiated=0
UnattendedInstall=Yes

[Unattended]
UnattendMode=ProvideDefault
OemPreinstall=Yes
OemSkipEula=Yes
DriverSigningPolicy=Ignore
OemPnPDriversPath=drivers\RAID\AAR1210

Then I used n-lite to create an ISO image from the installation directory c:\2K3_FILES (again, you can call this folder whatever you want). I burned the ISO to CD, booted and let me tell you when it saw my hard drive it was truly a wonderful sight. I was at it all day before I finally got it working.

You could also use ISO BUSTER to extract the boot image from your original Windows CD, then use Nero to create a new boot CD using the extracted image and the adding all the files and folders in c:\2K3_FILES to the CD. That would work too.