Hi All
This is a follow up on the same topic posted by others. Mostly a success story that I thought will help others. The link I used to download the IT8212 driver ver. 17.2.9 is this : http://ite-it8212-ata-raid-controller.software.informer.com/1.7/
The driver package comes as a .zip archive and there are two folders under the top directory i.e. 1618 and picture. Simply ignore the second. Under 1618 there are two more folders (other than couple of files). One is WIN2K and the other is WINXP.
The it8212 raid driver that ends with .inf is in the WIN2K as well as the WINXP folder. There is no folder specifically named as Win7 or similar in this archive I downloaded. (It could be because, the driver is older than the Vista era and ITE website says that they have phased out this model i.e. it8212 raid controller). Just for kicks I chose the WIN2K folder when it came to installing the raid driver. Please read on..You can either copy just the .inf file to a USB flash drive or do as I did : copy the entire tree from the top simply and browse to the above branch at the time of Windows 7 install. Now, plug in the flash drive and reboot the computer with the Windows 7 DVD in the drive.
Now, once you boot from Windows 7 install DVD, you expect it to not recognize the Raid IDE drive and at that point you can choose the 'install driver' option in the menu that appears at the bottom part of the window (which normally shows the hard drives if it could recognize them). Once you chose 'install driver' a dialog asks you to point out the driver location. You can 'browse' now to the USB flash drive and just point to the folder where the .inf file is located.
If the Win7 correctly chooses the .inf file, click 'next' and then cross you fingers/pray/bite/suck in your blanky or whichever else gives you comfort and hope for the best..
If everything goes well, voila! you should see the RAID IDE drive appear in the window. For me at least, the sailing after this was 'smooooooth'..
Good Luck