Windows Server 2008 and Adaptec 1430SA

Drivers for Adaptec’s 1430SA controller aren’t included with Windows Server 2008 for some reason best known to Microsoft. Although you can download the drivers from the Adaptec site, this doesn’t really help you if you are trying to install Windows onto the RAID controller itself…

After a bit of fiddling, I managed to get the drivers onto an ISO that I could feed to the virtual media on a KVM and connect to the server using my Windows XP in parallels on my Macbook Pro.

Step 1: Find yourself a Windows machine. For some reason, Adaptec provide the drivers in a self extracting WinZIP EXE.

Step 2: After extracting the EXE, copy the resulting files back to your Mac

Step 3: Launch the Disk Utility and then select File -> New -> Disk Image From folder, point it at the folder containing the newly extracted Adaptec driver files and click “Image”. Change the Image Format to “DVD/CD master” and make sure that Encryption is set to “none” then click save.

Step 4: Fire up the terminal and go to wherever you saved the .cdr image that the Disk Utility created

Step 5: Run “hdiutil makehybrid -iso -joliet -o adaptec.iso adaptec.cdr” substituting adaptec.cdr for whatever you called the .cdr image that the Disk Utility created

Now you have an ISO file containing the Adaptec drivers that you can burn to a CD or attach to your KVM when prompted by the Windows installer.