[cj4qts]

I am reformatting my Windows drive on a computer that has 4 SCSI drives and a Promise Technology SCSI/RAID controller (FastTrak 66). I want to leave the data on the 4 SCSI drives alone and only reformat the C: drive.

I have been reading the install instructions at the "Promise" website and am confused. Do I set my startup order to start with the floppy drive (as I have the controller drivers on a floppy disk) and install the "drivers" disk first? Will it automatically recognize the RAID drivers off of that disk?

Or, do I first reformat the C: drive, install Win 2000, and then install the "Promise" drivers to recognize the RAID?

Also, do I have to do anything with the BIOS at all throughout this process?

Thanks for your time,

Andy

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Hi Andy

This depends on which drive is your C drive. If the C drive is a standard IDE drive that uses the motherboards IDE controller, then you should be able to install windows first then install the Promise drivers afterwards.

If however the C drive is on the promise controller, then you will need to start the 2000 installation & when prompted, insert the floppy disk containing the promise driver.

As for the boot order, you should be able to boot straight from the Win2000 CD, so change your boot order to start with the CDROM.

[Samm]

Hi Andy

This depends on which drive is your C drive. If the C drive is a standard IDE drive that uses the motherboards IDE controller, then you should be able to install windows first then install the Promise drivers afterwards.

If however the C drive is on the promise controller, then you will need to start the 2000 installation & when prompted, insert the floppy disk containing the promise driver.

As for the boot order, you should be able to boot straight from the Win2000 CD, so change your boot order to start with the CDROM.

[cj4qts]

Thanks for writing back. My "C" drive is the IDE main computer drive which only contains Windows. The SCSI drives all contain my data and the program files.

Do I need to do anything with the BIOS? I read a few people talking about that.

Andy

[Tyger]

Samm is an expert here, and I like her siggy anyway, but I'd like to reccomend that you disconnect the scsi drives when you reinstall windows so as not to take any chance on losing your data. Too many sad tales of people losing files.

[Samm]

Tyger's right, that might be a good idea, just unplug the cable(s) from the promise controller but leave the cabling attached to the scsi drives, that way you don't have to worry about reconnecting every single drive again afterwards.

The only thing you may need to change in the bios is the boot sequence. This is often labelled boot order, boot priority or similar. Change it so that the CDROM drive (assuming you are booting from CD) is in the first position, followed by the floppy & the IDE hard drive.