General RAID driver slipstreaming questions

[NoUTurn20]

I have had an unattended XP Pro CD for a while and as long as I've had it it has been great. The only thing about it that has ever bothered me is sometimes I run into a computer with the HDD on a Raid or SATA channel that Win XP doesn't already have the driver for. Because I use an unattended winnt.sif file pressing F6 to locate the drivers on a floppy doesn't work (And I don't want to carry around 20 floppys). I want to start slipstreaming some of the more common RAID/SATA drivers directly into the cd (Si3112, Promise 20276, etc..). I read greenmachine's tutorial which is good and definetly helped me slipstream the si3112 drivers. The only line that honestly messed me up was this one: MAKECAB E:\XPCD\$OEM$\$1\DRIVERS\006\SI3112\SI3112.SYS

E:\XPCD\i386\SI3112.SY_. I know how to compress a file using the MAKECAB function but I'm not exactly sure which files I need to compress and intigrate into my I386 folder. Do I have to do this for every file? Is this only for the .sys files? Will each set of drivers have a different file I need to compress? Should I compress them all just to be safe? Also the OEM PNP path in greenmachines tutorial is set to: OemPnPDriversPath="Drivers\006\SI3112". If I wanted to add 5 different sets of drivers for 5 different controllers would I put them all in (for example) the $OEM$\$1\DRIVERS\006\SI3112\ folder and point to it? Could I create 5 directorys named Promise, Highpoint, Ali, Adaptec and Maxtor, place them all in the folder "$OEM$\$1\DRIVERS\RAID" and set OemPnP like this OemPnPDriversPath="Drivers\RAID"? If I do that will windows include all the SubDir in its search for drivers? Any help would be appreciated. I have received a lot of help here over the years and appreciate it a lot.

[Bâshrat the Sneaky]

So you want to integrate as much SCSI/SATA/RAID drivers as possible? Then try my DriverPack MassStorage and use the DriverPacks BASE to slipstream them. They do the exact same thing you're saying.

If you want to use the same method you explained above, choose method 1 in the DriverPacks BASE.

[NoUTurn20]

I have taken a look at your driver packs and though they are a great Idea i'd rather not use them. Honestly I do not like the file structure (I dont want a folder named D on my system drive that I have to keep there becasue windows needs to load a RAID driver from it all the time. Also all teh folders are abbreviated so I don't know what half of them are) and layout once the pack(s) have been applied. I'm not doubting they work or the integrity of them but I have spent a lot of time and hard work on this CD and I would like to learn to integrate them my self. Your packs would probably save me a lot of time and work but I like to do things the hard way simply becasue that is how I learn. Eventually if I can't get it to work I might use the Driver Pack but I would like it to be a last resort. Although to have been able to put such a pack together you must know a lot about the process. Can you possibly answer the questions I stated in the first post?

[Bâshrat the Sneaky]

Eh... What do you mean by this:

Honestly I do not like the file structure (I dont want a folder named D on my system drive that I have to keep there becasue windows needs to load a RAID driver from it all the time.

?

You can DELETE this folder after the installation has completed...

And which driver is located where can be found in the readme's. Why are they abbrevated? Simply because of this: the OemPnPDriversPath is limited to 4096 characters. That's why

I'm glad to hear from you that you would like to LEARN the process, so that you know how to do it yourself. Most users want to get things working as fast as possible, without really searching, learning and thinking. Nice to see that

As for the advice..

I read greenmachine's tutorial which is good and definetly helped me slipstream the si3112 drivers. The only line that honestly messed me up was this one: MAKECAB E:\XPCD\$OEM$\$1\DRIVERS\006\SI3112\SI3112.SYS

E:\XPCD\i386\SI3112.SY_. I know how to compress a file using the MAKECAB function but I'm not exactly sure which files I need to compress and intigrate into my I386 folder. Do I have to do this for every file? Is this only for the .sys files?

You only have to compress the MAIN .sys file (some drives have 2 .sys files). Don't forget to use the LZX compression, it has a better compression ratio! That would be like this:

MAKECAB /D CompressionType=LZX /D CompressionMemory=21 driver.sys

Will each set of drivers have a different file I need to compress? Should I compress them all just to be safe? Also the OEM PNP path in greenmachines tutorial is set to: OemPnPDriversPath="Drivers\006\SI3112". If I wanted to add 5 different sets of drivers for 5 different controllers would I put them all in (for example) the $OEM$\$1\DRIVERS\006\SI3112\ folder and point to it? Could I create 5 directorys named 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5, place them all in the folder "$OEM$\$1\DRIVERS\RAID" and set OemPnP like this OemPnPDriversPath="Drivers\RAID"? If I do that will windows include all the SubDir in its search for drivers?

That's possible, BUT you'll have to point to EVERY subdirectory. That would be 'Drivers\RAID\1;Drivers\RAID\2;...'.

I hope this helped

[NoUTurn20]

Thank you for your replys. I didn't know I was able to delete the file after windows install I must have missed that part in the readme's. Also thank you for your reply to my questions; I didn't even know that MAKECAB had other types of compression methods. Also I was reading soem other posts on the subject and the word txtmodesetup came up so I wasn't sure if the info I had before was correct. Ultimately what I want to do is make it so if there is a disk running on a SATA/RAID channel that needs a driver (usually you do this by pressing F6; the presence of winnt.sif prevents this) chances are it will already be on the CD. If I were to use your driver pack for mass sotrage would I still be using Mode 1 or would I switch to Mode 2? Also can you link me to some info on slipstreaming RAID/SATA files so that I can infact use them during txtmodesetup? Thank you for your help.

[Bâshrat the Sneaky]

If you only use DP MassStorage, you can use method 1, but if you want to use more DriverPacks, it's recommended to switch to method 2 (because this saves space on your UWXPCD).

Don't forget to use the FIX!

For more info, check 1. in this topic.