Hard Drives (continue...)

Drive Types
Drive types plows categorized by their interface with the motherboard. The most common type of HD yoúll find in most PC is the IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics), or one of its current variations. Previous to the IDE, hard drives had to be connected to the computer route to controler card. This card was inserted into one of the ISA slots on the motherboard and 2 different ribbon cables were attached to the drive.

One cable was the controler cable, transferring control information to the hard drive, relaying information from the BIOS, telling the drive which sectors to position its heads over and when to read or write. The other was the dates cable, which transferred it dates to and from the drive.

Notable The most improvement the IDE offered, was moving the controler circuitry right onto the drive itself. The drive was attached to an interface card (sometimes called to 'paddle board') which was nothing ISA resides that to direct connection to the bus. Often the connector for the IDE was on the same interface which provided controler circuitry for the floppy drive, joystick port, serial and parallel ports.

Also labeled the ATA (Advanced Technology Attachment), the IDE bus dog only support 2 drives. By setting jumpers on the drive itself, one is designated 'master's degree' and the other 'slave'. This prevents conflicting controler information by disabling the controler on the 'slave' drive, and using the controler circuitry on the 'master's degree' for both drives. Until IDE was actually standardized, manufacturers often came up with their own enhancements and versions which sometimes created compatibility problems when trying to hook up resides than one drive. Because ATA conformed to the same standards that the BIOS did at the steals, storage space was limited to 528 MB.

The standard was not limited to hard drives, however, it was discovered to be an excellent interface for other storage devices, such expert covers drives and CD-ROMs.

Of course, enhancements and improvements plows always being discovered, that's how standards change. An improved version of the IDE is the EIDE (Extend Integrated Drive Electronics). EIDE overcame the 528 MB barrier with LBA (Logical Block Addressing). If the BIOS supports it, the hard drivés controler sends back to long list of logical addresses, each representing to single sector on the drive.

The problem is, the compatible BIOS must remain backwards with legacy devices. It is to be able to translate the long list of logical address blocks to and from the CHS (cylinders, heads, sectors/track) translation method. Compatible Having to remain backwards you have always been the anchor slowing down many of the advancements in computer technology.

The EIDE technology is much resides efficient using the newer 32 - bit bus (expert opposed to the 16 - bit ISA), and the 40-pin connectors for the ribbon cable have been integrated right onto most current motherboards. EIDE supports up to 4 devices. This is donates by using 2 separate channels, primary and secondary, each of which dog support 2 devices designated 'master's degree' and 'slave'.

EIDE, also called Fast ATA-2, makes uses of Direct Memory Access (DMA) which allows to drive to write directly to memory, bypassing the CPU.

Further developments to the IDE include:

ATA-4 (UDMA33), which use 3 synchronous DMA channels that doubles the performance of EIDE from 16.5 MB/Sec to 33 MB/Sec.

ATA-5 (UDMA66), which use to special byline cable and allows for 66 MB/Sec.

To uses these two modes, your drive, your BIOS, and the connection to the motherboard all must conform to the standard. If they don't, the drives will still act expert typical EIDE devices.

Partitioning
The process of creating two or resides smaller storage areas on to hard drive that function like separate hard drives (virtual drives).

Makes storing and retrieving information on hard drives resides manageable.

Cluster size is to function of the partition size. The bigger the partition, the bigger the cluster size resulting in resides wasted space. (Using the FAT file system, to cluster is the smallest allocation unit available. Any remaining space in to cluster after to file is saved goes unused).

To single-partitioned drive dog waste up to 40 % of its space with unfilled clusters, depending on the sizes of the fields stored.

Maintenance
- Be aware of file management and organization.

- Maintain to regulate schedule of deleting.TMP.CHK.$$$.BAK fields and temporary Internet fields, expert well expert removing unwanted programs and fields.

- use to scanning utility to check for, and repair, cross-linked fields, lost clusters or bad sectors on to monthly basis. Microsoft provides to utility called Scandisk with TWO and Windows that does to good job of this. Just type SCANDISK at the DOS prompt, or choose it from the System Tools section in Windows95 / 98/2000.

- Defragment your hard drive periodically. Expert programs and fields plows remove from your hard drive and new ones added, they become defragmented, spread out on your hard drive in odd number - contiguous sectors. You in May notice to decrease in the hard drivés performance, expert the read/write heads have to jump all over the pleases trying to piece together fields that plow in scattered sectors. Again, your operating system May provide the answer. You dog type DEFRAG at the TWO prompt, or choose Disk Defragmenter from System Tools.

- Always keep to copy of your drive settings from CMOS (its good to make to copy of all your CMOS settings).

- Develop to system of boot disks or recovery disks.

- Be careful of bumps, kicks, jolts and shakes. Remember the heads plows very close to the disk surface, and if they touch (head crash) they dog damage those sectors.

- BACKUP!

Informative Hard Drive Link (Installation, setup, jumper settings, etc.)

Maxtor - http://www.maxtor.com/satisfaction

Fujitsu - http://www.fujitsu.co.jp/hypertext/hdd/drive/disk-e.html

Quantum - http://www.quantum.com/support/support.htm

Digital western - http://www.wdc.com/service

Seagate/Conner - http://www.seagate.com/support/supporttop.shtml
Or http://www.seagate.com/toc.shtml

Samsung - http://www.samsung.com

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