F6 disk

F6 diskis a colloquial name for afloppy diskcontaining adevice driverthat enablesWindows Setupto installMicrosoft Windowson storage devices based onSCSI,SATA,orRAIDtechnologies. All versions of theWindows NT familyprior toWindows Vistarequired F6 disks. Starting with Windows Vista, Windows Setup supports loading third-party drivers fromUSB drivesandCD-ROMs.

Usage

An F6 disk is named after the manner in which it is used. During the installation process, Windows Setup must load device drivers for the storage system on which Windows will be installed. Microsoft ships Windows with device drivers that support popular storage hardware. However, newer storage technologies will inevitably appear after the release of each version of Windows, needing newer drivers. To use these drivers, Windows Setup prompts its user to press theF6 keyshortly after the setup process starts.

Hardware manufacturers often provided their device drivers on CD-ROMs. Prior to Windows Vista, however, Windows Setup only supported reading storage drivers from theroot directoryof afloppy disk.Thus, users must have copied said drivers from their CD-ROMs to an F6 disk. Starting with Windows Vista, Windows Setup runs on a copy ofWindows Preinstallation Environment.Thus, it can read device drivers from CD-ROMs and USB flash drives.

Alternative

An alternative approach is toslipstreamthe required drivers into the Windows installation source. Prior to Windows Vista, doing so required third-party software such asnLite.After Windows Vista, Microsoft'sDISMutility supports customizing a Windows installation source.