Hard Disk Drive Troubleshooting Tips
HDDs record data by magnetizing ferromagnetic material directionally, to represent either a 0 or a 1 binary digit. They read the data back by detecting the magnetization of the material. A typical HDD design consists of a spindle which holds one or more flat circular disks called platters, onto which the data are recorded. The platters are made from a non-magnetic material, usually aluminum alloy or glass, and are coated with a thin layer of magnetic material. Older disks used iron oxide as the magnetic material, but current disks use a cobalt-based alloy.
The platters are spun at very high speeds. Information is written to a platter as it rotates past devices called read-and-write heads that operate very close (tens of nanometers in new drives) over the magnetic surface. The read-and-write head is used to detect and modify the magnetization of the material immediately under it. There is one head for each magnetic platter surface on the spindle, mounted on a common arm. An actuator arm (or access arm) moves the heads on an arc (roughly radially) across the platters as they spin, allowing each head to access almost the entire surface of the platter as it spins. The arm is moved using a voice coil actuator or in some older designs a stepper motor.
Re: Hard Disk Drive Troubleshooting Tips
Always have an alert on old computer systems whcih have large hard disk drives. If you are using old motherboard, there may be a possibility that system bios may not able to recognize hard disk drives which are larger than 2.1 GB. It's true that system bios is EPROM which is actually known to be read only and it can be edited with the help of some authorized editors. Approximately all new motherboards support this facility. The only thing you require is to go online, visit motherboard manufacturer's website and download a flash BIOS update. Just Install it and it will help you a lot.
Just check whether you have a huge capacity hard drive with more than 2.1 GB, then you have a problem in this situation. Windows 95 as an operating system will only recognize a partition with not more than 2.1 GB. You actually require FAT32 filesystem. With the help of FAT32 filesystem, youare able to have large capacity hard drive with no need to partition it. You are also able to save some space with FAT32 filesystem. To tell you more, larger hard drives actually need FAT32 filesystem.
- Partition Hard Disk Drive:
If you have a big fat filesystem hard drive as one partition, you need to consider partition also, if you are having a big hare disk drive. Partition of hard disk drive is the technique of dividing an area on a disk into smaller parts of lesser capacities which will help you to easily recognize the operating system.
Partition hard disk drive helps you to access more efficiently and it will increase functionality of high-capacity hard disk drive. You are also able to create partitions with the help of FDISK on your computer system running in MS-DOS mode or with the help of a third-party disk utility software. Remember this as you partition your hard disk drive, the entire data will be lost so be alerted regarding this.
You are able to set small partition for backup reason. In this situation, you need to decide to format, just format the partition you need to store Windows operating system on. Your data available in the backup partition will be there. But be alert! If you are trying to format a FAT32 partition in your hard disk drive, with a FAT16 format utility, the partitioned data in it will get completely lost! So don't try to install DOS after you format Windows operating system. As DOS tries utilizes FAT16, the FAT32 partition will get erased.
If you are buying a hard drive but still confused regarding the specifications of data access time and seek time, always remember one thing that the way to increase speed of a hard drive is through the average access time. This is the time actually taken by hard disk drive to access a single sector to the time when the drive's head reaches the required sector.
Many people are still confused between speed and space. The Quantum Fireball will provide you faster access time. A faster hard drive means better performance for your system. 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.
Re: Hard Disk Drive Troubleshooting Tips
I guess this will really help you in selection and detecting better hard disk drive. Do share it wid your friends and post comment regarding this
