1. Understanding and Troubleshooting Your PC

2. Chapter 5: Understanding, Installing, and Troubleshooting Disk Drives2 Chapter Objectives  In this chapter, you will learn: –How hard drives work and organize data –How to install a hard drive –How floppy drives work and how to install a floppy drive –About optical storage technologies and external and removable storage –How to manage and troubleshoot hard drives

3. Chapter 5: Understanding, Installing, and Troubleshooting Disk Drives3 How Hard Drives Work  Hard drives are magnetic storage media that have one, two, or more platters that stack together and spin in unison  Each side of the platter contains two read/write heads  The drive fits into a bay inside the computer case, where it is securely attached  Data is written to the disk as bits, where each bit is a magnetized, rectangular spot on the disk  A hard drive requires a hard disk controller, which is a special-purpose chip that allows the CPU to communicate with a hard drive

4. Chapter 5: Understanding, Installing, and Troubleshooting Disk Drives4 How Hard Drives Work

5. Chapter 5: Understanding, Installing, and Troubleshooting Disk Drives5 How Data is Organized on a Hard Disk  Physical storage involves how data is written to and organized on the storage media  Logical storage involves how the OS and BIOS organize and view the stored data  Formatting is the process of preparing a disk for reading and writing by defining how files will be organized on the disk –Low-level (physical) formatting –Partitioning –High-level (logical) formatting

6. Chapter 5: Understanding, Installing, and Troubleshooting Disk Drives6 Low-Level Formatting  A hard disk must be physically formatted before it can be logically formatted  Low-level formatting of a hard disk is accomplished by writing a pattern of ones and zeroes on the surface of the disk  These ones and zeroes divide the hard drive platter into tracks, sectors, and cylinders  With zone bit recording, the number of sectors per track varies from one track to another

7. Chapter 5: Understanding, Installing, and Troubleshooting Disk Drives7 Low-Level Formatting

8. Chapter 5: Understanding, Installing, and Troubleshooting Disk Drives8 Partitioning  Partitioning allows you to organize a hard disk into segments and lets you run multiple operating systems on a single computer  Partitioning under Windows 9x –The OS can divide a single physical drive into more than one logical drive –The partition table at the beginning of the drive records all these divisions –The first physical sector of the hard drive contains the Master Boot Record (MBR)

9. Chapter 5: Understanding, Installing, and Troubleshooting Disk Drives9 Partitioning

10. Chapter 5: Understanding, Installing, and Troubleshooting Disk Drives10 Partitioning  Partitioning Under Windows NT and Later Windows Systems –A drive can have up to four partitions –The active partition is the partition on the hard drive used to boot the OS –A primary partition has only one logical drive in the partition –An extended partition can have more than one logical drive A drive can have only one extended partition –The system partition contains the OS boot record

11. Chapter 5: Understanding, Installing, and Troubleshooting Disk Drives11 Partitioning

12. Chapter 5: Understanding, Installing, and Troubleshooting Disk Drives12 High-Level Formatting  High-level formatting places a file system on the disk for each logical drive –A file system allows an operating system to use the space available on a hard disk to store and retrieve files  The file system also defines the size of the clusters used to store data –A cluster is the minimum unit the operating system uses to store information

13. Chapter 5: Understanding, Installing, and Troubleshooting Disk Drives13 High-Level Formatting  High-level formatting using FAT –Boot record –Bootstrap loader –File Allocation Table  High-level formatting using NTFS –Master file table (MFT)

14. Chapter 5: Understanding, Installing, and Troubleshooting Disk Drives14 File Systems

15. Chapter 5: Understanding, Installing, and Troubleshooting Disk Drives15 Hard Drive Interfaces  A hard drive interface is the communication channel over which all the data that is read from or written to the hard disk flows  For a hard drive to work in a system, the hard drive interface must be compatible with the hard drive controller, the OS, and the BIOS  With autodetection, the BIOS detects the new drive and automatically selects the correct drive capacity and configuration

16. Chapter 5: Understanding, Installing, and Troubleshooting Disk Drives16 IDE/ATA Interface Standards

17. Chapter 5: Understanding, Installing, and Troubleshooting Disk Drives17 IDE/ATA Interface Standards

18. Chapter 5: Understanding, Installing, and Troubleshooting Disk Drives18 DMA or PIO Transfer Modes  A hard drive uses one of two methods to transfer data between the hard drive and memory –DMA (direct memory access) transfer mode can transfer data directly from the drive to memory without involving the CPU –PIO (programmed input/output) transfer mode involves the CPU and is slower than DMA  Most new systems use DMA

19. Chapter 5: Understanding, Installing, and Troubleshooting Disk Drives19 IDE Cabling Methods  40-conductor IDE cable  80-conductor IDE cable  Serial ATA (SATA) cable

20. Chapter 5: Understanding, Installing, and Troubleshooting Disk Drives20 Configuring IDE Drives in a System  A motherboard can support up to four IDE devices using parallel ATA cabling –Primary IDE channel, master device –Primary IDE channel, slave device –Secondary IDE channel, master device –Secondary IDE channel, slave device  A cable-select cable has a master connector and a slave connector  The hard drive always should be installed as the master device on the primary IDE channel

21. Chapter 5: Understanding, Installing, and Troubleshooting Disk Drives21 Other Interface Standards  SCSI (Small Computer System Interface)  USB (Universal Serial Bus)  FireWire (IEEE 1394)

22. Chapter 5: Understanding, Installing, and Troubleshooting Disk Drives22 Preparing to Install a Hard Drive  Make a backup of important data  Read documentation  Prepare your work area and take precautions  Plan drive configuration

23. Chapter 5: Understanding, Installing, and Troubleshooting Disk Drives23 Setting Jumpers

24. Chapter 5: Understanding, Installing, and Troubleshooting Disk Drives24 Mount the Drive in the Bay  Remove the bay for the hard drive and insert the hard drive in the bay  You must be able to mount the drive in the bay securely  Decide whether to connect the data cable to the drive before or after you insert the bay inside the computer case  Place the bay back into position and secure the bay with the screw(s)

25. Chapter 5: Understanding, Installing, and Troubleshooting Disk Drives25 Mount the Drive in the Bay  Install a power connection to each drive  Connect the data cable to the IDE connector on the motherboard  Connect the hard drive light on the front of the case, if necessary  Test the drive before replacing the computer case

26. Chapter 5: Understanding, Installing, and Troubleshooting Disk Drives26 Mount the Drive in the Bay

27. Chapter 5: Understanding, Installing, and Troubleshooting Disk Drives27 Use CMOS Setup to Change Hard Drive Settings  When you first boot up after installing a hard drive, go to CMOS setup and verify that the drive has been recognized, the boot order is set correctly, and that settings are correct  Confirm that IDE HDD Auto Detection is enabled  It may be necessary to enter the information about the drive in CMOS manually

28. Chapter 5: Understanding, Installing, and Troubleshooting Disk Drives28 Partition and Format a New Drive  Partitioning and formatting a drive while installing Windows  Partitioning and formatting a drive with an installed OS –Disk Management utility  Partitioning and formatting a drive without an OS

29. Chapter 5: Understanding, Installing, and Troubleshooting Disk Drives29 Troubleshooting Hard Drive Installations  Check that the formatting utility you used has been run successfully  Verify the CMOS setup has been configured correctly  Your system BIOS must recognize large drives  Check DIP switch and jumper settings  Check power cord and data cable connections

30. Chapter 5: Understanding, Installing, and Troubleshooting Disk Drives30 How Floppy Drives Work  Floppy drives now are used mainly for troubleshooting a failed boot and as a quick and easy way to transfer small files from one computer to another when a network is not available

31. Chapter 5: Understanding, Installing, and Troubleshooting Disk Drives31 How Data is Organized on a Floppy Disk

32. Chapter 5: Understanding, Installing, and Troubleshooting Disk Drives32 Optical Storage Technology  This technology uses laser beams to read and write data –CDs and DVDs use optical technology  The surface of an optical disc stores data as pits and lands –Lands are raised areas on the surface –Pits are recessed areas on the surface  The bits are read with a laser beam that distinguishes between a pit and a land by he amount of deflection or scattering that occurs when the light beam hits the surface

33. Chapter 5: Understanding, Installing, and Troubleshooting Disk Drives33 Installing a CD-ROM Drive  Follow the same basic steps as for installing a hard drive –IDE interface –SCSI interface –External drive

34. Chapter 5: Understanding, Installing, and Troubleshooting Disk Drives34 CD-R and CD-RW  CD-R (CD-recordable) drives allow you to write data to a CD, and can be read by regular CD- ROM drives  No one can edit or overwrite the data on a CD- R disc  A CD-RW (CD-rewritable) drive allows you to overwrite old data on a CD-RW disc with new data

35. Chapter 5: Understanding, Installing, and Troubleshooting Disk Drives35 DVD

36. Chapter 5: Understanding, Installing, and Troubleshooting Disk Drives36 Troubleshooting Optical Storage Drives and Media

37. Chapter 5: Understanding, Installing, and Troubleshooting Disk Drives37 External and Removable Storage

38. Chapter 5: Understanding, Installing, and Troubleshooting Disk Drives38 Defrag and Windows Defragmenter  Fragmentation occurs when a single file is placed in several cluster locations that are not directly next to each other  On freshly formatted drives, the OS writes files beginning with cluster 2  After files on the drive have been deleted, the OS writes new files in any available clusters  Since fragmentation is undesirable, you should defragment your hard drive periodically –Defrag command from the command prompt –Disk Defragmenter utility (GUI)

39. Chapter 5: Understanding, Installing, and Troubleshooting Disk Drives39 Disk Cleanup  Disk Cleanup is a Windows utility used to delete temporary and other nonessential files on a hard drive

40. Chapter 5: Understanding, Installing, and Troubleshooting Disk Drives40 Disk Caching  A disk cache is a temporary storage area in RAM for data being read from or written to a hard drive, and is used to speed up access time to the drive

41. Chapter 5: Understanding, Installing, and Troubleshooting Disk Drives41 Enabling Disk Caching

42. Chapter 5: Understanding, Installing, and Troubleshooting Disk Drives42 Troubleshooting Hard Drives: An Ounce of Prevention  Be gentle with a hard drive  High humidity can be dangerous for hard drives  Do not smoke around your hard drive  Do not leave the PC turned off for weeks or months at a time

43. Chapter 5: Understanding, Installing, and Troubleshooting Disk Drives43 Troubleshooting Hard Drives: An Ounce of Prevention  Defragment files and scan the hard drive occasionally  Run antivirus software regularly  Make backups and keep them current  Back up the partition table and boot record

44. Chapter 5: Understanding, Installing, and Troubleshooting Disk Drives44 Common Hard Drive Problems  Drive retrieves and saves data slowly  Hard drive not spinning  Hard drive not found  Invalid drive or drive specification

45. Chapter 5: Understanding, Installing, and Troubleshooting Disk Drives45 Common Hard Drive Problems  Damaged boot record  Damaged FAT or root directory or bad sectors  Data and program file corruption

46. Chapter 5: Understanding, Installing, and Troubleshooting Disk Drives46 Getting Technical Support  To make calls to technical support more effective, be sure to have the following information ready when you call: –Drive model and description –Manufacturer and model of your computer –Exact wording of error message, if any –Detailed description of the problem –Hardware and software configuration for your system

47. Chapter 5: Understanding, Installing, and Troubleshooting Disk Drives47 Getting Technical Support

48. Chapter 5: Understanding, Installing, and Troubleshooting Disk Drives48 Chapter Summary  In this chapter, you learned: –How hard drives work and organize data –How to install a hard drive –How floppy drives work and how to install a floppy drive –About optical storage technologies and external and removable storage –How to manage and troubleshoot hard drives

49. Understanding and Troubleshooting Your PC Chapter 5 Complete