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hard drive - article index

• How To Format A Hard Drive by: Brian Maroevich
• Hard Drive Selection by: J A Carpunky



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.	Hard Drive
.	-20 GB Hard Drive for Dimension XPS Series Systems - The hard drive is the primary storage unit of the computer. It is where the operating system, applications, files and data are kept. If you use your computer for digital video, audio file storage or you like to work with intense applications, you should consider buying a larger size hard drive. High data transfer rates and a 7,200 RPM spin speed make these performance series disk drives especially well-suited to high speed desktop and server applications. This 20 GB, 7200 RPM hard drive has been tested and validated on Dell systems to ensure it will work with your computer and is compatible with Dell Dimension XPS Series systems. It is supported by Dell Technical Support when used with a Dell system. This product includes the following parts: Hard drive, cable and instructions.
.	-80GB External Hard Drive and Backup System w/Software - FireWire / IEEE 1394 and USB 2.0 / 1.1 - The 80 GB External USB 2.0/FireWire Desktop Hard Drive from Iomega offers a high storage capacity of 80 GB enabling users to store large amounts of data. It features both USB 2.0 and FireWire compatibility. With a rotational speed of up to 7200 rpm, it provides fast disk access. For maximum system protection, it lets you make a duplicate of your entire system and save up-to-the-minute incremental file changes quickly. The hard drive comes with the Iomega Automatic Backup and Symantec Norton Ghost 2003 disaster recovery software such that you can designate certain files to be backed up, or recover your entire system if your computers hard drive crashes.
.	-36.7 GB 10,000 rpm Atlas 10K IV Internal Ultra320 SCSI Hard Drive - The Maxtor Atlas 10K IV Hard Drive is designed to handle demanding high-bandwidth and high-capacity enterprise server applications. It offers a high storage capacity of up to 36.7 GB, enabling users to store large amounts of data. With Ultra320 SCSI interface, the drive delivers a high data transfer rate of up to 96 MBps, and is also backwards compatible with Ultra160, Ultra2, Ultra SCSI interfaces. The Ultra320 SCSI interface includes MaxAdapt a closed-loop method that ensures low error rates, easy integration, and increased bus efficiency for optimal system performance.

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How To Format A Hard Drive by: Brian Maroevich

Here's how to format a hard drive (Legal Stuff: We are not responsible for any damages, lost data, or anything of the sort)...

If you have a computer, you surely know what a hard drive is. If you don't have one, or simply don't know what a hard drive is, then this article will begin with a short description of the hard drive. Then we will cover formating a hard drive...

Step 1: What Is A Hard Disk Drive?

A hard disk drive in computing is a type of storage device made up of hard disk platters, a spindle, read and write heads read and write arms, electrical motors, and integrated electronics contained inside an airtight enclosure.

Now you know what the hard drive is. Let's stick to the point and start with the information on the title of this article. How to format a hard disk drive....

Step 2...

First of all, you should have a reason if you really want to learn how to format a hard drive. But don't forget that formating a hard drive does NOT permanently delete your data!

Of course, when you format your hard drive you think that the data is really deleted, but that is not the case.

The fact is that the data you have "deleted" can be restored. Nonetheless, you should not experiment with formatting a hard drive because you never know what may happen. Of course, it also depends on the software you use, for example, there are such products that will permanently delete the data you want and then you can continue the process of how to format a hard drive.

Step 3...

In fact there is nothing so difficult in it. You first need to decide what operating system you intend to load after formating a hard drive.

It is best and easiest to use a boot disk for that Operating System, such as MS Dos6.2 or Windows95b or Windows98SE. You will need the proper Windows95/98 boot disk in order to load these operating systems on the computer, else it will reject loading due to the wrong Operating System on the computer.

Step 4...

Then you will have to insert your boot disk in the floppy drive and start the computer.

Once the system has completed booting and an A: prompt appears. You will need to type format C: /s and then press Enter. The function of this command is to tell the system to format your "C" drive and when it is finished to copy the system files to the drive.

The "/s" switches for "System". You can format a different drive this way by using a different drive letter.

Step 5...

After that you will see on the screen the following text: "WARNING, ALL DATA ON NON-REMOVABLE DISK DRIVE C: WILL BE LOST! Proceed with Format (Y/N)?" and if you really want to continue, type [Y] and then press Enter.

Your screen should display the size of your drive and a countdown in percentage of formatting completed. Depending on your computer's speed and the size of the drive it can take from a few minutes to over 15 minutes.

When it reaches 100% complete, you will see a new message: FORMAT COMPLETE. SYSTEM TRANSFERRED. This message is to indicate that the files required to boot your computer from the hard drive have been copied from the floppy to the hard drive.

The computer can now boot from the hard drive without a boot disk in the floppy drive.

The last message that will appear on your screen is the following: "Volume label (11 characters, ENTER for none)?" You can either press any key to continue, or simply to press Enter. And now, you can finally begin to load your Operating System.

Keep in mind that you can receive an error message, which says "insufficient memory to load system files". If you do receive such message, do not worry. It is caused by the lack of a memory manager loaded at boot and your PC can only access the first 1mg of ram memory.

You can handle this situation with two options. The first one is to omit the /s switch when formatting. You should do it by typing this: FORMAT C: and then press Enter. Then when the format is complete, manually add the system files to your hard drive by using this command: SYS C: and press Enter again.

The second solution is to load a memory manager in order to overcome this issue. If you don't have any you can easily download one from one of the million sites on the Internet.

Step 6...

You see, we have finally reached the end of How To Format A Hard Drive. and consequently – the end of this article. Now you surely know how to format a hard drive. But, once again, don't play with the commands if you are not serious about formating a hard drive.

Even if the data is restorable you may do something wrong to your computer. That is why, you should be careful! And now, good luck!

©2004-2005 Brian Maroevich
http://www.cheap-computers-guild.com

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About The Author
Brian Maroevich is founder of Cheap-Computers-Guild.com. Brian is also an author, marketing consultant, computer enthusiast, and athlete. Email: brian@cheap-computers-guild.com
Courtesy of http://www.ArticleCity.com/

Hard Drive Selection
by: J A Carpunky

Perhaps the biggest mistake people make when building their computer(s) is to underestimate the importance of the hard disk drive (HDD). In our modern society, bigger is synonymous with better, so when you go to buy a hard drive you look at how "big" it is, its data capacity. But is that all you should be considering when buying your hard drive?

Like every other component of your computer, the HDD is far too complex a system to describe in any sort of detail here, but hopefully by the end of this article you will know what to look for when you go to buy your new hard drive.

There are 4 primary aspects to look at in a hard drive (in order of importance):

1. Rotational frequency and average seek time
2. Buffer size
3. Internal/external transfer rates
4. Capacity

Rotational frequency has become a large selling point (5400/7200/10000/15000RPM) recently, so you shouldn't have too much difficulty finding out what the rotational frequency of your HDD is when you go to buy it. Now of course the faster it spins, the faster it can read from the disk (there are other advantages also), but be aware that the faster it spins, the more wear is put on the drive, and the more likely it is to encounter errors and malfunctions later in life. Hard drives are pretty much the only systems within your computer that have moving parts (CD-ROM, floppy disk drives, and fans also have moving parts, but they're all cheap and if they break you won't lose all the data you've accumulated over the course of owning your computer, be sure to back up your data regularly!). If you know anything about physics or engineering, then you know that moving parts produce friction and wear, and a faster spinning platter (the part that holds the data and spins) means more friction, and therefore more wear on your drive. Of course the faster it spins the faster it can read data from the platter. So what can you do? well again you backup your data as much as possible and you get the fastest spinning drive money can buy (which is 7200RPM for ATA devices (the sort you are buying) and 15000RPM for SCSI and some Serial ATA devices (you might get Serial ATA, that depends on your motherboard)). So look for a "7200RPM" label on the drive you're thinking of getting, it's important!

The "buffer" I'm referring to is the transfer buffer that temporarily stores data to read from or write to the hard drive. The reason for this is that the bus (data channel between the hard drive and the motherboard) can only handle so much information at a time, and it takes a long time for the data to be found and retrieved from a platter (random seek time), so it takes a big chunk of the requested data and stores it in a very fast data buffer to be sent at the bus's convenience. So with a larger buffer you can queue more data for transfer over the bus without having to keep sending requests to slowly find more data from the platters. Some newer drives come with as much as 8MB of buffer capacity, but it is more common to see 2 or 4MB. Usually a drive with a large amount will use that as a selling point and print it on the box/website, otherwise you can assume it has a 2/4MB buffer. My advice is to find one with as much as you can afford.

Now for the transfer rates you're going to need to do some searching, the best way to find these numbers is to go to the manufacturer's website and look at specification sheet for the model you're looking to buy (actually this is the best way to get all the information I've talked about so far). One thing to look out for is that you may read something that says 133MB/s or ATA/133 or SATA150 or 150MB/s, and these are not the numbers you are looking for, those numbers describe the bus connecting the hard drive to the motherboard, and are theoretical peak numbers, which tell us virtually nothing. Also, if you are buying a Maxtor, don't bother looking up actual transfer rates, as Maxtor is apparently afraid to release such information. Not to say Maxtor's are bad drives, actually Maxtor has risen to the top in terms of technical support and they are much more willing to replace broken drives than some other companies, which is important since some ridiculously large amount (something like 10 or 15%) of hard drives are either dead on arrival or die within the first few weeks of use. As with the last two points, when looking at transfer speeds (if you can find them) always try to pick the one with the highest numbers you can afford.

Notice that the first three of the 4 major aspects were all speed related? That was done intentionally to give you a sense of the importance of speed in the hard drive, because they are very very slow creatures, and for your gaming experience you don't need an enormous hard drive so much as a fast one. To increase speed substantially more you can set up a RAID, which is a network of hard drives which (in RAID0 mode) share portions of the same data, such that accessing data takes 1/n time (n = number of hard drives attached) compared to 1 hard drive. To do this you really need a hardware RAID chipset, which are commonly included on higher-end mainboards.

Finally, capacity is an unnecessary nicety. The smallest hard drives you can buy today that are still within those higher speed classes are all about 30GB, which is more than enough for your games. But since games are not everything, and if you happen to be an iTunes member or like to download anime then you will really want some extra space. So I would recommend getting something between 60 and 120GB, any more and you're going to be paying through your teeth, any less and you might be looking to buy a supplementary hard drive in a couple years. And, oh yeah, 300GB hard drives from Maxtor are out, but they are comparatively slow, so I wouldn't recommend getting one for gaming, I like to stick to single platter drives (40-100GB usually), as they produce less heat and are less likely to break down on me.

That is really all you need to know in order to make a good choice when upgrading your hard drive or buying one for a new computer. Of course there are many other resources on the web if you would like more detail on the inner working of hard drives.For further information please visit http://www.computer-gaming-system.com

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About The Author
J A Carpunky http://www.computer-gaming-system.com
Courtesy of http://www.ArticleCity.com/