Chapter 7

1. Chapter 7 Hard Drive Installation and Support By Brian Linger

2. Installing a Hard Drive • Obtain the necessary components. Adaptors Boards, Data Cables, Power Splitters, if not supplied. • Take all necessary safety precautions. (For you and your drive!) • Remove case if you are installing an internal drive. • Locate an open drive bay if adding an additional drive. Disconnect and remove old drive if upgrading. • Try to find an open bay with the best possible air circulation. • Set any Jumpers or switches needed to determine the drives position within your system. • Insert screws, using those supplied by the drive manufacturer. • Connect the Data cable. • Connect the Power Cable, and splitter if necessary. • Close case. -Hard drives are not as hard as they look. (Don’t drop them!)

3. Hard Drive Jumper Settings • Hard drives generally contain a set of jumpers used to determine it’s place within your system. • The four types of settings usually found with IDE drives are: Single, Master, Slave, Cable Select • The Cable Select setting uses it’s location on the data cable to determine the drivers position. • SCSI drives either contain a set of jumpers to set the SCSI ID, or a dial on external drivers manipulated by turning it or using a screwdriver, • Some manufacturers drive settings are not always compatible with another's.

4. Preparing a Hard Disk for first time use. • Inform CMOS setup of the new drive. • Create Primary partition. • Set Primary partition as the ‘Active’ partition. • Create Extended partition and any logical drives desired. • Perform a ‘High-Level’ format on the drive partitions you created. • Install the Operating System generally with a ‘Bootable’ CD-ROM, or floppy.  Pat yourself on the back! 

5. What is another term used to describe IDE? ATA (Advanced Technology Attachment) • How many wires will you find on an IDE device cable? 40 traditionally, 80 on UDMA/66 and above. • What are the 40 extra pins on newer IDE drives used for? Extra grounds, used to isolate the 40 wires in use from line noise. • What are the four different position configurations on an IDE device? Single (Stand Alone), Master, Slave, and Cable Select • What are two disk drive interfaces that were used before IDE? MFM (Modified Frequency Modulation), RLL (Run Length Limited) IDE Quiz

6. CMOS Setup • Before you can use your hard drive in your computer, in most cases you will have to configure your CMOS to recognize your new disk drive. • On older computers and hard drives you must configure the details yourself such as the number of cylinders, heads, tracks, P-Zone, L-Zone, etc. • Most newer machines can auto-detect these details based on communication with the hard disk BIOS. • Some newer machines will Auto-Detect and auto-configure any new drives upon first boot.

10. Using FDISK to partition a drive. • FDISK is a program supplied with MS-DOS, and Windows 9x to create and manage partitions on your hard disk. • Boot your system with a Floppy disk or a Bootable CD-ROM. • Type in FDISK to execute the program. • Enable Large disk support if you have a drive with greater than 2GB capacity, or wish to use FAT32. • Create a primary DOS partition, then specify the size in MB’s or by a percentage of the drives capacity. • Set the Primary DOS partition to ‘Active’ if you wish it to be bootable. • Create an Extended DOS partition if you have leftover space. • Create any Logical Drives in the Extended partition you wish to use. • Exit the program. • Reboot your machine for your changes to take effect.

13. Little known FDISK Commands • FDISK 1/PRI:100 - Command line to create a 100 MB Primary DOS partition. • FDISK 1/EXT:500 - Command line to create a 500 MB Extended DOS Partition. • FDISK 1/LOG:250 - Command line to create a 250 MB logical drive within your Extended DOS Partition. • FDISK /STATUS - Shows you the current status of your hard drives and their partitions. • FDISK /MBR - Rewrites your Master Boot Record without changing the status of your partitions. • FDISK /X - Ignores extended disk-access support. Use this switch if you receive disk access or stack overflow messages.

14. How do you configure a SCSI device channel? Either by spinning a dial on an external device, or by changing jumpers on an internal device. • How many pins will you find on an a ‘Wide’ SCSI channel? 68 Pins. • Why do you need a Terminator at the end of a SCSI chain? To nullify the ‘Electronic Noise’ on the SCSI Bus. • How many bits does a ‘Narrow’ SCSI transmit at a time? 8 bits • What are the three types of SCSI terminating resistors? Passive, Active, and Forced Perfect SCSI Quiz

15. Proper Hard Disk Care • There are several things that you can do to prevent lose of data, or hard disk failure. • Always make backups of critical data. Re-writeable CD-ROMS, removable media such as ZIP/Jazz drives, tape drives, and solid state memory media work well. There are several third party programs that can do this for you automatically. • Run Defrag, and Scandisk regularly. You can use built task managers, or external programs provided with your backup hardware to do this automatically for you at scheduled intervals. • Run your PC often. PC’s left dormant for long periods of time are prone to data corruption. • Don’t bump or otherwise disrupt your hard disk while in operation. This can cause loss of data, or even damage it. • Don’t smoke around your hard disk. Studies have shown that smoking near your hard disk can lower it’s lifespan by as much as 25%. - Do not taunt your hard drive. As it may become aggravated.

16. Hard Disk Interleaving • A method to arrange data in a noncontiguous way to increase performance. • A disk drive can access only one sector at a time, but the disk is constantly spinning. By the time the drive is ready to access the next sector, the disk has already spun past it. If a file spans more than one sector and if the sectors are recorded next to each other, the drive may need to wait a full rotation to access the next sector of the file. If the sectors are staggered, the disk will be perfectly positioned to access the next sector.

17. Using Multiple Operating Systems • Many systems are capable of utilizing more than one operating system on the same hard disk. • To facilitate this kind of setup you must use a Boot Loader, such as the one supplied with most Linux packages. • To properly set up a Multi-Boot system you should first have an idea of which Operating Systems you wish to use. • Many Operating Systems use File Systems that are not compatible. • When preparing to setup a Multi-Boot system it is key to create the proper partitions. Generally separate partitions for each Operating System is ideal. • Calculate the proper size for each partition. This includes the size of the Operating System, as well as any applications you plan to use. • A great site for info on the creation of Multiple Boot systems is: http://www.blackviper.com/Articles/OS/Multiboot/multiboot1.htm

19. Performance Enhancers, and System Utilities • There are many programs that you can utilize to enhance your systems overall performance. • Peter Norton (The God of PC’s) has released a program called Norton System Works. This program allows you to change the way Windows 9x, 2000, and XP machines start, as well as how your applications run under windows. • Norton System Works includes the widely used anti-virus program Norton-Antivirus, one of the best programs of it’s type around. • System Works, also includes the well know set of Norton Utilites. Capable of finding and fixing system problems including hard drive problems, software errors, and hardware configuration conflicts. It can also optimizes file storage for faster hard drive performance, as well as monitoring your PC continuously to spot problems before they occur. • These programs can often be vital for support of PC’s in both businesses and homes.

20. Confucious Say: There are two basic principles to Hard Disks and the Universe One tiny mistep can have catastrophic consequences With effort, and proper care you shall succeed Grasshopper