Installing nvidia Raid driver for Windows Vista

Notorious Lee · 31 May 2007 at 17:11

If I want to install Windows Vista from scratch on a brand new PC & want to install it on a raid array do I need to install the nvidia raid driver before the install at the section where it is asking which storage device you want to install it on. It has an option which is "Load Driver"?

My motherboard is an Asus P5N32E-SLi 680i chipset.

Also, if so I am presuming the very first thing I need to do is download the latest driver from nvidia.com onto a CD & insert the CD when I want to load the driver?

Thanks for your help.

Dr_Evil · 31 May 2007 at 17:12

yes. get the driver on a floppy.

marc2003 · 31 May 2007 at 17:13

Dr_Evil said:
yes. get the driver on a floppy.

you don't have to use a floppy with vista. cd or usb stick works fine (or so i've been led to believe.

)

Dr_Evil · 31 May 2007 at 17:16

marc2003 said:
you don't have to use a floppy with vista. cd or usb stick works fine (or so i've been led to believe. )

In that case i change my statement into simply "Yes".

Notorious Lee · 31 May 2007 at 17:26

Thanks for the replies.

Do I need to extract certain files from the driver or is it just a simple case of selecting the downloaded driver?

marc2003 · 31 May 2007 at 17:28

i think windows setup needs to be able to see the .inf files so if these are inside a zip/rar/exe then you'll need to extract them first.

bledd · 31 May 2007 at 17:35

extract the IDE folder from the nvidia drivers

can't remember which one it uses now, there's 3 subfolders in the ide folder

i've got a feeling its the SATAIDE folder, just extract the whole IDE folder to a usbstick and keep trying them until it shows the size of your raid array or single drive correctly

w3bbo · 31 May 2007 at 19:39

Nvidia raid drivers are inc in vista - you won't need to load them like in xp as they are already there and your array will be detected fine.

Notorious Lee · 31 May 2007 at 21:47

Ok. Well I have 2 x 320gb drives & before the install begins when it asks you to select the drive for the install which in my case it shows the one drive because I enabled RAID in the BIOS & set-up a raid (0) array it show's the total capacity of 598 gb.

Where has the other 40gb gone?

I was told that once I install the nvidia drivers it will then show the correct size of my hard drive(s).

Another reason why i'm looking into this issue in more depth is that I think the way I have been installing vista in the past has been the main cause of an issue I keep getting which is when I appear to install nvidia drivers once vista is installed without installing the nvidia drivers before install the vista control panel & welcome centre will not open & neither will the games & other apps. So what i think maybe happening is that when i install the latest drivers after install it's overwriting the drivers that come with vista therefore corrupting certain files. I maybe wrong.

marc2003 · 31 May 2007 at 22:02

you haven't lost any space at all. that's spot on for 2 * 320gb drives. it's to do with how disk space is worked out. i'm not very good at explaining though.... the manufacturers use 1000 when really it should be 1024.

1024bytes = 1kb
1024kb = 1mb
1024mb = 1gb

so 1024*1024*1024* 598 = 642097610752bytes which is near enough.

Notorious Lee · 31 May 2007 at 22:19

Hi marc,

Have you heard about the control panel issue?

marc2003 · 31 May 2007 at 22:29

sorry, nope.