Hi I'm a software guy that got a hold of my company's old server after an upgrade, and I'm looking to set it up at home for some projects. It's a custom built box that's probably about ten years old now. It has two Intel Xeon processors, 4 gb of RAM (which I'm upgrading to 8) and 4 500 gb SATA hard drives with expansion slots for four more.
The OS it came with (Windows 7 Ultimate) was dis-activated and I have had a lot of trouble finding the right RAID drivers to install any other OS over it. As the title suggests, it came with a 3WARE AMCC 9550SX controller with four slots (this model: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1740122). I've tried doing a clean installation of Windows 7 Pro, Windows server 2008, and Windows server 2012 so far, and every time I get to the point of selecting the installation drive, and it gives me an error that it can't see any hard drives and and the option to add the appropriate drivers. I made a full backup of the drivers that came with the machine (it had Windows 7 Ultimate installed), but when I try to select them from a flash drive the Windows installation won't take them.
I'm looking to run a few virtual machines on this server - probably Windows Server 2012 as a web server for some ASP.NET projects and Ubuntu Server as a home file server. I originally wanted to install VMWare's ESXI to use for this purpose, but it didn't like the RAID controller. So I decided to give Windows 7 Pro or Windows Server 2008 with VirtualBox or a similar program a try - and again, I'm stuck with these driver errors on installation.
My questions to the experts out there: does any one know where I can find these drivers? A google search returns some results, but it's all just junkware websites with no actual valid driver downloads available. I'm willing to try another RAID controller - preferably one with 8 ports so I can utilize all of the drive slots, but I don't want to break the bank for this. Could anyone recommend a comparable controller with readily available drivers that would fit these needs for a decent price? Also, I've read in other places that this controller may is more Linux-friendly. If that's the case I would be totally fine with installing Ubuntu Desktop 64 bit and running the virtual machines from there.
Thanks in advance for any advice!
The OS it came with (Windows 7 Ultimate) was dis-activated and I have had a lot of trouble finding the right RAID drivers to install any other OS over it. As the title suggests, it came with a 3WARE AMCC 9550SX controller with four slots (this model: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1740122). I've tried doing a clean installation of Windows 7 Pro, Windows server 2008, and Windows server 2012 so far, and every time I get to the point of selecting the installation drive, and it gives me an error that it can't see any hard drives and and the option to add the appropriate drivers. I made a full backup of the drivers that came with the machine (it had Windows 7 Ultimate installed), but when I try to select them from a flash drive the Windows installation won't take them.
I'm looking to run a few virtual machines on this server - probably Windows Server 2012 as a web server for some ASP.NET projects and Ubuntu Server as a home file server. I originally wanted to install VMWare's ESXI to use for this purpose, but it didn't like the RAID controller. So I decided to give Windows 7 Pro or Windows Server 2008 with VirtualBox or a similar program a try - and again, I'm stuck with these driver errors on installation.
My questions to the experts out there: does any one know where I can find these drivers? A google search returns some results, but it's all just junkware websites with no actual valid driver downloads available. I'm willing to try another RAID controller - preferably one with 8 ports so I can utilize all of the drive slots, but I don't want to break the bank for this. Could anyone recommend a comparable controller with readily available drivers that would fit these needs for a decent price? Also, I've read in other places that this controller may is more Linux-friendly. If that's the case I would be totally fine with installing Ubuntu Desktop 64 bit and running the virtual machines from there.
Thanks in advance for any advice!
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