Hard Drive
Introduction
Your hard drive, or also called hard disk, is a gigantic
diskette in your computer. It is one disk big enough to store you Operating
System, games and programs. Without it, your PC is just an empty shell.
Better beware of older systems with large hard drives. If
you have an older motherboard, your BIOS might not recognize hard drives
larger than 2.1 GB. Hopefully, your BIOS is EPROM which means although read
only (noticed the ROM?) it can be edited by authorized editors. Nearly all
newer motherboards support that. All you need to do is to go online, go to
your motherboard manufacturer's website and try to download a flash BIOS
update. Install it and it should be done.
If you have a large capacity hard drive with more than 2.1
GB, you might have a problem. Windows 95 itself will only recognize a
partition with not more than 2.1 GB. You need FAT32. With FAT32, you can
have one large capacity hard drive without partitioning. You will also save
some space with FAT32. In short, larger hard drives require FAT32.
Note: If you don't know what FAT32 we are talking about,
go to our FAT32 FAQ page.
Although you can have one big fat hard drive as one
partition, you should consider partitioning as well, if you have a big hare
drive. Partitioning is the method of dividing an area on a disk into smaller
portions of lesser capacities that can be recognized by the operating
system. Picture this: your hard drive is a cake. It is easier to eat a cake
divided into pieces than to eat it whole.
Partitioning enables you to achieve greater efficiency and
functionality from high-capacity disks (2.1GB or greater). You can create
partitions by using FDISK on a system running in MS-DOS mode or by using a
third-party disk utility. Remember that after partitioning, all data will be
loss so be careful.
You can set aside a small partition for backup purposes.
In case you should decided to format, just format the partition you use to
store Windows. Your data in the backup partition is still there. But be
careful! If you format a FAT32 partition with a FAT16 formatting utility,
your partitions with data in it will all be loss! So never install DOS after
formatting Windows. Because DOS utilizes FAT16, your FAT32 partition will
all be gone.
If you want to buy a hard drive but are confused with the
specifications of access time and seek time, remember that the key to the
speed of a hard drive is the average access time. This is the time taken to
access a single sector to the time when the drive's head reaches the sector.
But beware, some ads quote seek time that is not the appropriate
measurement. Access time is seek time plus latency (the time it takes for
the chosen sector to come around to be positioned under the read/write head)
A lot of people are confused between speed and space. If
you have a Quantum Fireball with 1.2 GB and a Quantum Bigfoot with 3.5 GB
surely you should put the Bigfoot as the master and Fireball as the slave
right? Wrong! You should always consider speed as well as space. The Quantum
Fireball has a faster access time. A faster hard drive means better
performance. Make sure your operating system is store in the faster hard
drive. You can use the Bigfoot to store your programs or games which makes
not much difference to the speed. With speed hungry programs or games, store
them in the faster drive too. You must know what to put where.
The status of the drives is determined by setting small
jumpers that are usually located next to the IDE connector on the drive
itself.
