Comments on: A Dell PowerEdge Server, Windows 2003 x64, and the Battle Over SAS RAID Drivers

By: Saurabh

Saurabh — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 22:11:31 +0000

Hi Julie,
Thanks for the post. It did help me to an extent however I am getting stuck after the SATA Drivers are read from the floppy disk. The setup stops by saying that the Hard Disks are not powered up?? I am not sure what the problem is.
I even tried the ISO boot disk you suggested however, it never gives me an option for Windows 2003 server.

Is there some reccomendation you have that I can try?

Thanks for your help in advace.

Saurabh

By: Yagil

Yagil — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 13:13:48 +0000

THANK YOU !!!
Over a year later, and that information you share is so valid.
You managed to cover the issues I ran into, some hesitations (from thew stomach) and more, but finally provide a simple solution, which somehow not only Dell by my local vendor support fail to provide.
That is the internet I knew ~20 years ago.

By: Cristobal M

Cristobal M — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 05:31:55 +0000

Thanks a million. People like you make the world an easier place. I was about to go through the whole nonsense with the USB floppy and figured I’d do a bit of research first

All the best,
Cristobal

By: alec

alec — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 21:54:51 +0000

perfect iformation many thanks

By: sahand

sahand — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 20:54:20 +0000

I setup the the usb to emulate as a floppy, when it gets to the part to insert a floppy and press enter. it tells me that the disk cannot be read because it contains an unrecognized file system.

I formatted the usb many times with FAT and FAT32 on machine running XP and copied the driver files over after every format, still tell me the same message.

By: Rocky

Rocky — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 13:57:32 +0000

Thanks for the article. Just a point on that, I do not agree with the constraint of 950Mbs for partitioning. I installed Win2k3 on a Power Edge 1950 with SAS5 using a USB floppy to get controller drivers installed and so far so good. Partition size is 30Gb.

By: Brad

Brad — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 18:36:25 +0000

Thank you so much! This artical saved my ass! Now I want to go hit someone from Dell that made this such a pain.

By: Frustrated

Frustrated — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 14:19:35 +0000

If you’re using USBKeyPrepF6.exe, it automatically fills in a volume name. Try erasing that.

By: Donty

Donty — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 22:19:17 +0000

Hi, anyone who has problems with the Dell F6 usb trick when the install actually starts I think I found a quick solution. Set the F2 bios settings boot order to usb as first device. Reboot the system but hit f11 or the boot menu key and select boot from CD manually.

The usb flash drive loads properly and is then seen during the installation phase. Worked for me on a 2950 with perc6i and sas drives.

Hope it helps!

By: Glava

Glava — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 15:56:59 +0000

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!….

Thank You from Croatia, You saved my ass!!!!!!!!!!!!