Techs, help! Hard drives

[Guy Incognito]

Regarding the terms "primary" and "secondary":

Most, if not all, PC motherboards support two IDE device channels. These are usually labeled on the motherboard as "IDE1" and "IDE2" or something to that effect. The IDE1 channel would be considered the primary IDE channel, with IDE2 designated as the secondary.

Each IDE channel will support two devices, with one device designated as the "master" device and the other as the "slave".

If you are running Windows 95 or above, you can low-level format the hard drive to use 32-bit file access. This will allow you to format the 4.3GB drive as one large partition instead of being limited to a partition size of 2GB or smaller under the older DOS formats. This also alleviates the problem of inefficient use of clusters when storing large quantities of small files. nothing wrong with using a smaller partition size if that's your preference. Sometimes it helps in keeping your files organized.



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"It's only common sense,
There are no accidents 'round here."

[Guy Incognito]

PS: In reference to BIOS tweaking, when you go to your standard settings screen for your BIOS, make sure that you set your primary and secondary IDE channels to autodetect connected drives.

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"It's only common sense,
There are no accidents 'round here."

[BurnMeUp]

Howdy,

As mentioned Primar and secondary master and slave are terms used when you have 2 IDE connections on your motherboard.

BTW the settings you change when setting up hardware of this sort is in CMOS on the BIOS (the BIOS is preprogramed and not user configurable, CMOS is)

As for configuration of a laerge hard drive:
If you are using Win 98 use FAT 32 in FDISK, this will give you the optimum file space, if using Win 95, it's best to make 2 2GB partitions... the methods used for sector creation for windows 95 will end up having lost data areas with most file formats and you won't get the optimum space usage.

Better yet, if you run Win NT or Win 2k, use NTFS.



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Voted Biggest Smartass by all you beautiful people!
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You always use violence. I should've ordered glutinous rice chicken.

[Squee]

Thanks for the info, Guy! I got it to work, no problems. I was just being cautious, as to not screw up my whole system.

[Squee]

Thanks BMU. Originally, I wanted to add this second drive to put a seperate OS on it (NT or Win2K). But, I decided to use it as an non-partitioned drive for my mp3s (over 3GB worth) instead. Thanks guys for the quick info.

[Riboflavin]

If you are running Windows 95 or above, you can low-level format the hard drive to use 32-bit file access.

NEVER low-level format a modern hard drive unless you've got a program directly from the manufacturer and they've said it will work for your drive. A low-level format with the incorrect tool can render your drive unusable because it won't understand the actual geometry of the drive (modern disks do all kinds of funky things to get around old BIOS limits).

What you're thinking of is using Fdisk to partition the drive for Fat32 and using format to format it Fat32, not a low-level format. "32-bit file access" is probably not the best term to use, as there are various other bits in Win95 where similar terms are used.


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Kevin Allegood,

"At least one could get something through Trotsky's skull."
- Joseph Michael Bay

riboflavins is correct. don't low-level format a modern hard drive. i damaged a 1.6GB maxtor drive i had doing that. it would boot up and run, but it would delete files at random on its own.

[BurnMeUp]

I think perhaps Guy got FDISK and LLF confused.

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Voted Biggest Smartass by all you beautiful people!
________________________
You always use violence. I should've ordered glutinous rice chicken.

[Guy Incognito]

Oh, how old habits die hard. You guys were right--I did misuse the term "low-level format". Just nostalgic for the old MFM days when you sometimes had to use DEBUG to go and enter the contents of a drive's defect table into the controller. Actually, Western Digital and other manufacturers usually include some really good partitioning/formatting/diagnostic software with their drives. As mentioned above, use the included utility disk to get your drive set up properly.


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"It's only common sense,
There are no accidents 'round here."

[Padeye]

Not all versions of W95 support FAT32, only OEM SR2 which I think was the last version. It doesn't have some nice features like conversion to and from FAT32 format but I had no problems with it. All said though I'm happier with W98 second edition.

[handy]

W98 second edition?????

Heh. You are lucky 95 people out of 100 in the w98 newsgroup cannot stand SE. I happen to be one of them.

[JonF]

Just nostalgic for the old MFM days when you sometimes had to use DEBUG to go and enter the contents of a drive's defect table into the controller.

Ah, good old G=C:800 nad guessing at interleave ...

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jrf

[Squee]

A friend of mine gave me a new WD 4.3 HD, and I want to add it to my computer. I successfully added it to an empty slot in the case, and the wiring and jumpers are all fine. I want to designate my original disk as 'master' and the new one as 'slave'.
I am a little confused about the terms 'primary slave', 'secondary slave', 'primary master'... What settings do I have to tweak in bios? When I run Fdisk, how should I set the partition? Sorry if these question are a bit vague, but any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

[EnigmaOne]

{{{Not all versions of W95 support FAT32, only OEM SR2 which I think was the last version.}}}---Padeye

Just a note:
There are two additional, if not exotic, flavors of Win95 that will do FAT32: OSR2.1 and OSR2.5.

OSR2.5 is the version of Win95 that was marketed "With USB support."

:::nostalgically remembering the days of Debug and LLFs:::

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--Kalél
TheHungerSite.com
"If our lives are indeed the sum-total of the choices we've made, then we cannot change who we are; but with every new choice we're given, we can change who we're going to be."

[handy]

When I get a new HD, I read the manual. If it's not there, its on the manf web site.