Adding a New Hard Drive
All standard IDE controllers are capable of connecting one or two hard
drives (SCSI controllers can handle seven, but most people aren't that
lucky). But there are three basic things to be wary of when deciding to
upgrade.
If you are going to have two hard drives, is there room inside your
computer case for another drive? Desktop systems may already be full; tower
cases usually have room for expansion. Also, will your computer's power
supply support an additional drive? If there's a spare 'Px' power
connector lying inside, then there's no problem. If not, you can always
buy a Y-splitter to branch off an existing power connector, but first make
sure the power supply can handle the extra wattage.
Second, if you plan on installing a drive larger than 528MB, will your
computer support it? All new '486 and Pentium computers will handle large
hard drives, but '386 and older '486 computers have an upper limit of 1024
cylinders (if you try to use a larger number, the BIOS
will simply chop off 1024. In other words, your 540MB hard drive just became
12MB!) If you're not sure about your particular computer, check with the
manufacturer of the motherboard or BIOS. Even
if your particular BIOS doesn't support the
larger hard drives, some hard drive manufacturers will provide a software
utility that will override the BIOS in order
to give you access to the entire drive.
The last and most important question is, what is the make and model
of your existing hard drive and the one you want to add? When you have
two hard drives connected together, one of the drives must be set as the
'master', and the other as the 'slave'. Although most contemporary drives
work well together, be aware that some models are not quite compatible
with others, and some require different jumper
settings depending on what model the companion drive is. My best advice
is to buy a well-known brand and try it out. If it doesn't work out as
a slave drive, try it as the master (and vice-versa). Jumper
settings for each drive can be found in the user's manual for the drive;
if you are missing the manual for a drive, contact the manufacturer.
Once you have physically installed the new hard drive, there are a few
more steps you need to take to prepare it for use. In your computer's setup
utility, make sure it has the correct settings for your hard drive. These
settings will be listed in the documentation that came with the drive,
and in some cases may be on a sticker on the drive itself. Newer computers
have an auto-detect feature which greatly simplifies the setup; just tell
it to auto-detect the drive, and the computer will fill in the rest of
the numbers for you.
Next, you need to create a partition on
the drive so that it will be recognized by DOS. If your drive requires
special disk management software, follow the directions provided by the
drive's manufacturer. Note that if you have a really large drive, you may
discover the maximum partition size. For DOS
and Windows 95 partitions that use FAT-16,
you cannot create a single partition larger
than 2GB. Therefore if your hard drive is larger than this, you will need
to create an extended partition to handle the
remainder of the drive. See the notes on how DOS
assigns drive letters. The next paragraph applies if you have a small
hard drive (less than 528MB) or your computer will handle larger hard drives
on its own.
If the new drive is your primary drive, you will need a DOS Setup disk
(or Windows 95 Startup disk) to start the computer. After starting the
computer and bringing it to the DOS prompt,
you can use the command FDISK to create a Primary DOS partition.
In most cases, you will want the partition
to occupy the entire hard drive. After creating the partition, you will
need to reboot the computer again. Then use the FORMAT command
to prepare the partition for use as follows: if this is your primary drive,
type "FORMAT C: /S" (the /S option allows
the computer to start directly from the hard drive.) If this is a secondary
drive, type "FORMAT D:".
After the drive has been formatted, you may proceed to install DOS or
Windows 95 if this is your primary hard drive, followed by whatever other
software or files you wish.
