FREE Tutorial
INSTALLING AN IDE DEVICE
DESCRIPTION
This tutorial is taken from our A+ Certification PC Hardware Support Module 4 - Installing, Upgrading and Troubleshooting training course. It explains the steps required to install a new IDE device in a PC.
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TUTORIAL TAKEN FROM COURSE :
A+ SYLLABUS 10 - MODULE 4 - INSTALLING, UPGRADING AND TROUBLESHOOTING
FULL COURSE DETAILS
At the end of this course you will be able to use the correct procedures to replace the following components of a PC: keyboards, monitors, serial/parallel devices, storage devices, interface cards, power supply units, processors, memory and motherboards. You will be able to install and configure a slave or master IDE device and install an IDE hard disk and configure its partitions and file systems. You will recognize the features of SCSI standards and be able to install and configure a SCSI adapter and peripherals. You will lean how to install a video card and monitor and install and configure a modem. You will also be able to suggest techniques to employ when troubleshooting, troubleshoot the PC boot process, use a multimeter to test a power supply and diagnose POST, processor, memory, modem, hard and floppy disk, audio, monitor/video and I/O port errors. This set of modules will prepare the reader for the exam 220-301.
TO ACCESS THE FULL COURSE AND HUNDREDS OF OTHERS, CLICK HERE.
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Installing an IDE Device
This section outlines the procedure for installing an additional IDE device. You can use a similar procedure when installing the first drive in a new PC or changing IDE configuration.
Determining the Configuration
Most motherboards have two IDE controllers: IDE1 (primary) and IDE2 (secondary). Each IDE controller can support a 40-pin cable with up to two devices attached. The devices must be configured by jumper settings as slave or master.
If there is only one device on the cable, use the master setting. (Some devices have a specific single jumper setting for this).
If you add a second device to the cable, use the slave setting.
Configure the drive from which you want to boot as the master device on the primary controller, unless the boot sequence options in the BIOS settings let you choose otherwise.
Certain configurations give better performance than others.
You should configure the hard disk as the master drive on the primary controller and the CD-ROM as the master drive on the secondary controller. Less contention will occur because IDE can only service one request from one device at a time. Also, the CD-ROM is a much slower device and if you attach it to the same controller as the hard drive, it will slow down access.
Set Jumpers for Each Device
Use a pair of thin-nose pliers (or fingers) to set the appropriate jumper settings for each device. Instructions on configuring the jumpers are either contained within the documentation supplied with the device, or may be written on the device itself. If this documentation is not available, the Internet is an ideal source of reference.
Connecting the IDE Device
- Take anti-static precautions.
- Turn off the PC. Remove the power cable and the cover.
- Check that there is a free drive bay to hold the extra disk.
- Connect the IDE cable to the drive and the drive controller. The IDE cable must be correctly orientated. Usually it has a red stripe that should be aligned with Pin 1 on each connector (this is often marked with a white spot). The master and slave drives can be plugged into any connector on the cable. Cables are not usually supplied with the PC but may be supplied with the new hard drive. You may require an IDE cable with connections for two drives or a second IDE cable (if the secondary controller is to be used). Check that the data cable is correctly orientated.
- Attach a cable from the power supply to the power connector on the new drive. The plug will only fit one way.
- Fix the disk securely into the drive bay, using the screws provided.
- Replace the cover and turn on the PC.
Configuring CMOS
All but the oldest PCs automatically detect and configure the BIOS to recognize the new device. If an auto-detect option is not available, use the CMOS setup utility to select the device-specific parameters. The settings for a hard disk drive include cylinders, heads, sectors, translation type, PIO mode and DMA mode. Ensure that you save the changes before exiting from the setup.
Preparing a Hard Disk
A new hard disk drive requires partitioning and formatting before it can be used; the FDISK and FORMAT commands are used for this purpose.
Low-level Formatting
A new hard disk is completely unmarked. For the heads to be able to locate tracks and sectors, index marks have to be written to the surface. This process is called a low-level format and is done at the factory. In addition to writing the track and sector marks, a defect table is built so that files are not stored on bad areas of the disk with the potential risk of lost data.
Some BIOS setup programs and utility packages such as PC Tools allow a low-level format.
You should never perform a low-level format on IDE drives unless explicitly instructed to do so by the manufacturer, as it could make the disk completely unusable.
Interleaving
First-generation (ST-506) hard disk drives could not transfer data as fast as it could be read by the processor or disk controller. ST-506 drives stored data in sequential sectors. This is an inefficient way of accessing data. By the time one sector has been processed, the disk has spun past the next and the controller has to wait for a full revolution of the disk before it can access more information.
Interleaving reduced this problem by renumbering the sectors, so they were non-sequential.
Current PCs and drives are capable of sustaining a 1:1 interleave. Therefore the process of choosing the correct value (selected during the manufacturer-performed low-level format) is now automatic and you should not change it.
Partitioning
Partitioning the hard disk drive is the act of dividing it into logical volumes. High-level formatting prepares it for use with an operating system. You must partition the hard disk into at least one volume before performing a high-level format.
FDISK
FDISK is a program used within DOS and Windows 9x for configuring hard disk partitions. You can usually find it on the Setup Disk.
FDISK can create primary and extended DOS partitions.
A primary partition must exist on the disk from which you wish to boot, as it is the only type that can be set active (bootable). A primary partition acts as a single volume and is accessed with a single drive letter.
An extended partition can be created if the primary partition does not use all of the hard disk space. An extended partition can be divided into logical DOS drives, each of which acts as a separate volume and is accessed with its own drive letter.
Partitions
The size of a partition cannot be changed; you must delete and recreate it, effectively deleting any data in the partition. If you want to change the size of the primary DOS partition, you must delete and recreate every partition on the disk.
Do not store data in your partitions unless you are happy with the setup.
High-Level Formatting
FORMAT is a DOS command that creates the boot record, File Allocation Table (FAT) and the root directory. It also checks the hard disk surface for errors and can transfer the system files to the disk, turning it into a boot disk.
File Systems
FAT16 and Clusters
The format process creates a file system on the disk partition. Microsoft operating systems offer a choice of file systems.
FAT16
FAT16 is used with most DOS or Windows-based PCs and may also be used with Windows NT. FAT stands for File Allocation Table and refers to how disk usage is tracked. A FAT16 system is created with the DOS FORMAT command.
Clustering
Modern hard disks often have more than 65,536 sectors. The only way that the FAT16 system can cope with this number of sectors is to group them together in 2s, 4s, 8s, etc., and to give each group an entry in the FAT. This process is known as clustering. Disk clusters are also referred to as Allocation Units.
For example, a 150MB disk has 300,000 x 512 byte sectors, which is too many entries for the FAT to cope with. However, if 8 sectors form a cluster, the number of FAT entries becomes 300000/8 = 37500.
A cluster is the smallest unit of storage. In the example, the smallest unit is 8 x 512 bytes = 4KB. The larger the cluster, the more space is wasted on the disk because the cluster is the smallest amount by which a file can grow.
FAT32
FAT32 is an enhancement to the standard FAT file system that supports 232 entries. It was introduced in Windows 95 OEM Service Release 2, also known as Windows 95b. Earlier versions of Windows 95 cannot read a disk volume formatted with FAT32 and nor can Windows NT version 4. Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows 2000 and Windows XP all support FAT32.
FAT32 has two main advantages over FAT16:
- Smaller cluster sizes
- Support for disks or partitions up to 8GB (2GB for FAT16)
To create a FAT32 file system, use the Windows 95b or Windows 98 version of FDISK. You will be asked if you want large disk support to be enabled; if you reply \"yes\", the partitions that will be created are FAT32.
NTFS
The file system used by Windows NT (NTFS) is incompatible with the FAT file system used by DOS and other types of Windows. Windows NT is the only operating system that can use NTFS; other operating systems cannot use a disk formatted with NTFS.
NTFS is far superior to FAT. It is a robust system that includes file-by-file compression, full permissions control and attribute settings, transaction-based operation and many more features. It does not have the same problems with cluster and hard disk sizes as FAT and has many other performance-enhancing features such as RAID support.
NTFS partitions are created from within Windows NT. Existing FAT partitions can be converted during Windows NT installation or afterwards using a conversion utility.
NTFS5
NTFS version 5 is an updated version of the NTFS used in Windows NT4.
Windows 2000 uses NTFS5, but Windows NT4 can only read NTFS5 partitions if service pack 4 is installed. This raises some issues such as potential dual-boot problems. For example, if you wanted to dual-boot Windows NT4 and Windows 2000, you would have to update NT4 to SP4 before installing Windows 2000. Once this has been done, both operating systems would be able to access the file system. However, you would come across problems if you ever wanted to reinstall Windows NT4, as the setup would not be able to access the NTFS5 file system.
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