Areca got back to me and said they had no plans to release a oem.tgz file for the new driver.

My first attempt at making my own oem.tgz did not work. I'm going to try one more time.

SUCCESS!

I've created a custom oem.tgz file that works with Varazir's custom installation script. I have attached it to this post. Thanks to Dave for explaining how to do this.

The attached Areca-100202-oem.tgz file uses the latest Areca driver you can get from here: ftp://ftp.areca.com.tw/RaidCards/AP_Dri ... 100202.zip

I've created a USB stick and an ISO file that will list my Areca RAID array as a disk I can install VMware ESXi 4.0 Update 1 to. These were made on Ubuntu 10.04 if anyone is curious about compatibility for Varazir's script and ESXi 4.0 Update 1.

Thank you so much, xivm. You were very helpful too, Dave, I was just about to attempt to make my own when I got xivm's message. I am so glad this forum exists, with any luck I should have my server up and running by the end of this weekend. Thanks again to everyone. You guys are awesome.

I finally managed to find the arcmsr.o. There is a folder called .rpm (with a dot) on the Areca ISO with the drivers. That's why I did not find it in the beginning. I have extracted the arcmsr.o from the rpm in that folder and have created an oem.tgz which works fine. I will link a working oem.tgz in the first post in this thread to make it easy for people to find.