Promise 378 Fasttrak raid drivers won't copy (xp installation)

**crcorley** · February 10th, 2005, 03:57 AM

There was a thread that was made a long while ago where someone had exactly the same problem as me. Here is the link: http://forums.windrivers.com/showthr...light=fasttrak

I'm making another thread because this problem didn't seem to ever get resolved. I have read a mind-numbing amount of pages trying to find a solution but no one seems to have figured it out yet. Anyway if the link doesn't work or you don't want to read it here is my setup and the problem I'm having...

Asus P4P800-E Deluxe
P4 3.2GHZ
1 GB DDR400
2 Maxtor 300GB SATA in raid 0 array

I have exactly the same raid controller as the other person. The promise fasttrak 378. The raid array was easy to setup, when the computer boots up it says its functional and continues booting, then xp installation starts I press F6 to install the raid drivers, they load and windows xp recognizes and formats the drive, loads a few more files and then says "setup cannot copy the file: fasttx2k.sys". I have tried continuing the installation by skipping the files and it finishes but when winxp tries to boot for the first time it goes to the blue screen. The drivers I have came from the CD that was included with the mobo, I have tried putting them in every kind of different logical directory on the diskette but no matter what I cannot get these files copied and without them I cannot install windows onto my raid 0 array. So my question for everyone out there is has anyone had this problem and found a way to get these files installed without using the workaround methods described in the link above? Any other kind of advice is greatly appreciated as well.

**TripleRLtd** · February 10th, 2005, 08:21 AM

HAAA!!!! Geesh, that link brings back memories.

My first fight with teh Yak.

Listen, I'm in a hurry now, but I will get back after I remember what the heck I did to solve that one. Afer all, it was a year and a half ago...
Way to go to start a new thread. I mean I even pm'd the original poster to ask what he did and he replied but...

**Ya_know** · February 10th, 2005, 08:39 AM

You weren't clear how you made the floppy. There should be a (if I recall correctly) make disk bat file, or executable on the CD that creates the floppy. You have to do this on a system already running windows. Is that what you did, or did you just manually copy files to the floppy?

**crcorley** · February 10th, 2005, 11:47 AM

Actually I did both. There is a makedisk program on the mobo cd which is what I did first. Again, when windows firsts asks for them (when you have to press F6) it works fine. But when setup starts copying files it will not copy those files for some reason. And I also tried manually copying the correct files from the mobo cd straight to a diskette. No luck on either end.

**crcorley** · February 11th, 2005, 11:29 AM

Well after more extensive searching and even posting in other forums and found no answers I've decided what I'll do for now is get an IDE hard drive and just install windows on that and have the raid array as the second hard drive. I know for sure that will work because everything I have read basically says that installing these particular drivers is no problem on a machine already running windows. If this one works okay I may also attempt buying a second IDE hard drive and putting those two in an array and seeing if I can get that to work as well (asus p4p800-e deluxe has raid controllers for both SATA and IDE). If anyone knows anything before I do any of this please tell me asap. Otherwise, thanks for your time reading my post.

**duey** · February 11th, 2005, 12:02 PM

Just an idea for you, I don't know exactly what the fastt2k.sys actually stands for, as far as the 2k goes. But I remember installing this driver and it has options for a handful of Microsoft OS's. This may be just a stupid idea, but usually with computers it is something simple and stupid. So what I am getting at here is, are you sure the 2k in this fasttr2k.sys file isn't referring to windows 2k. I can't remember the different file names for these drivers, but hey why not check it out. Maybe you are installing a driver for the wrong OS.

**crcorley** · February 11th, 2005, 02:57 PM

I am absolutely positive. 2k refers to the number in the series of raid controllers that were produced. There are also seperate drivers for windows 2k. And to top it all off I have tried installing windows 2k with this setup and exactly the same thing happened. :/

**confus-ed** · February 11th, 2005, 05:41 PM

All the guys who seem to have solved this problem (from googling, as I haven't had this problem myself) , seemed to get around this by slipstreaming the drivers into a setup disc, thus making them 'native xp drivers' ..

Pressing f6 isn't to just add raid drivers, I think what it says is 'add 3rd party drivers'

**cyberdax** · February 28th, 2005, 04:32 AM

I have Had exactly the same problem installing the OS XP PRO onto my ASUS, Question. Are you trying to run XP with SP2 on it?if so then use a disk without service packs on it ,as i have found that i had exactly the same problem, then i used a disc without service pack 2 on it and it worked like a dream. Install sp2 later!.

**dann.pool** · February 28th, 2005, 03:00 PM

I'm having the exact same problem but with different controllers (I have nVidia & Silicon Image controllers). I found this article at MS, wonder if the last paragraph sheds any light on the subject for why the driver copy fails? I'm going to slipstream the drivers & hope that works.

**Larommi** · February 28th, 2005, 11:27 PM

What size clusters did you select for your raid?

I read somewhere that this could be an issue for larger drives. And since yours would format to just under 600 gigs...that could be the problem.

**confus-ed** · March 1st, 2005, 04:48 AM

Originally Posted by Larommi

I read somewhere that this could be an issue for larger drives..

Any 'clues' on that bit ? Generally most people would leave the default cluster size as setup routines don't really tell you what the implications are (I'm thinking performance wise, but maybe there's other considerations too, like it goes wrong if greater than x ?) when you pick this value.

**dann.pool** · March 1st, 2005, 09:08 AM

Just to continue adding my two cents, the slipstreaming worked fine. Win XP (with SP2) installed fine on the array.

In reference to the larger drives are you talking about the fact that Win XP (without SP2) doesn't like drive sizes above 137GB, or the cluster size? My cluster is set to 64K which is what the nVidia default was.

~Dann

**confus-ed** · March 1st, 2005, 10:45 AM

Originally Posted by dann.pool

, or the cluster size? My cluster is set to 64K which is what the nVidia default was.

That was what I was on about

..

You can make your cluster size in an array, greater or lesser to improve performance for expected reads - my 'educated guess' on what Larommi was on about, was that if you set the cluster size right down (you reduce a thing calld 'slack' with this, which is 'disk wastage' for want of a better two word 'explain') you might end up with too many physical clusters for any controller to deal with if you started using large disks - I just wanted a link to back that up/ disprove it

But ta for the confirmation, that at least in your case, a slipstreamed copy of xp got you around this problem

**bblueffire** · November 8th, 2006, 07:14 PM

I realize this thread is nearly a year old, but I hope to shed some light on it:

I have the P4P800-E Deluxe board also, and I have both the IDE RAID and SATA RAID running. My only advice is to triple check that you have downloaded both drivers from Asus, because the names are very similar.

SATA RAID: Promise SATA378 Driver V1.00.0.26
IDE RAID: Promise FastTrak 378 RAID Driver V1.00.1.37

I have tested the 2003 drivers for both of these on Vista and they work. And I have used them both under XP before. Currently I use both under Gentoo Linux (2.6 Kernel) and they work wonderfully.

If you have already checked all of these things, then keep in mind that these boards may be expensive and great, but are known to have small bugs. (I bought two of them and one of the boards' onboard Marvel LAN never worked, ever.)

Hope this helps someone.