TECHNOLOGY ADVICE YOU CAN TRUST TM ◆ WWW.PCWORLD.COM ◆ PC WORLD MAGAZINE SUBSCRIPTIONS PPoowweerr GGuuiiddee ttoo Hard Drive Upgrades >>SPECIAL BONUS COLLECTION<< Copyright © 2002, PC World Communications, Inc. All rights reserved. The trademark PC World is owned by International Data Group and used under license by PC World Communications, Inc. Printed in the United States. You must have permission before reproducing any material from PC World. Direct inquiries to permissions@pcworld.com. JULY 2001 200 PC WORLD ILLUSTRATION: JEFFREY PELO HARDWARE TIPS KIRK STEERS HARDWARE TIPS graph shows the drive’s capacity, the storage space in use, and the amount available (see FIGURE 1) . 4.2GB or 3.2GB: Some PCs manufactured before 1998 have BIOSs that limit disks to one of these two capacities. To remedy this, either get a BIOS upgrade or buy a new disk controller card. 2GB: Any hard drive using the FAT16 file system can recognize only up to 2GB. This includes systems run- ning Windows 3.x and the original version of Win- dows 95. If you have an old FAT16 drive in a PC using Windows 95B or Windows 98, you can upgrade the disk to FAT32 using the Windows FAT32 Drive Converter Utility. You can- not use any disk utilities designed for FAT16 drives after making the switch, but your 16-bit applications will run just fine. A drive with the latest version of the ATA data transfer technology—currently the Ultra DMA/100 mode (also called Ultra ATA/100)—will work at top data mp 3 collections , gargantuan software programs, and multimegabyte video files have left PC owners scrambling for free storage space. The best solution for most PC users is to buy and install a new hard disk. Fortunately, now is a great time to buy: Drives are bigger, faster, and cheaper than ever. (For more on the recent crop of drives, see “Livin’ Large” at www. pcworld.com/reviews/march2001/large.) But not every PC can ac- commodate today’s ATA (EIDE) hard drives. Some drives may have more stor- age capacity than your PC can recognize, some may be too fast for your system, and some may not fit in your PC’s case. Before you buy the latest drive, make sure your PC can use it. Hard disks with double- digit–gigabyte capacities are no problem for most PCs purchased in the last three years. But older sys- tems have drive-capacity limitations. Here are common size limits, and how you can get around them. 8.4GB: Systems with a BIOS date before 1998 typically don’t support drives with capacities greater than 8.4GB. If your BIOS doesn’t support large-capacity drives, see if your PC vendor’s Web site offers a BIOS update for your machine. If you install a drive with a capacity of 8.4GB or greater and your PC fails to rec- ognize its full capacity (and you can’t find a BIOS update), you can bypass the BIOS and the onboard disk controller by in- stalling an updated ATA disk controller card such as the $34 Ultra100TX2 from Promise Technology (www.promise.com, 800/888-0245). To view your drive’s capacity, open My Computer, right-click your hard disk, and select Properties.A transfer speeds only in PCs with the latest chip sets. Most PCs made since 1999 sup- port the previous Ultra DMA/33 mode, and many support Ultra DMA/66 mode. To find out which mode your PC sup- ports, check your system’s documentation or visit your PC manufacturer’s Web site. There are six ATA standards (ATA-1 through ATA-6) and often several modes for each. Manufacturers have assigned their own names to some modes—some- times to denote added capabilities. FIGURE 2 provides some ATA perspective. Your new hard drive’s ATA mode does not have to match that of your PC. The lat- est drives will operate at the fastest mode your PC supports. Unless you often move huge files, a lower mode won’t cut perfor- mance much. Still, save money and buy a drive that matches your PC’s capabilities. Find more tips at www.pcworld. com/heres_how. We welcome your tips and questions and pay $50 for published items. Kirk Steers is a PC World contributing editor. Fast Monitor Resets DO YOU FREQUENTLY change your moni- tor’s resolution and color-depth settings to accommodate various programs and graph- ics? Here’s a shortcut: Enable Windows’ Quickres utility, and a small monitor icon will appear in your system tray. Click it once to display a list of all resolution/color-depth settings that your PC’s monitor supports. In Windows 98 and Me, select Start•Settings• Control Panel, open Display, select Settings, and click Advanced; then, under the Gener- al tab, select Show settings icon on taskbar. Find the Perfect Hard Disk for Your PC ឣ FIGURE 1: SEE DRIVE capacity as a graph in My Computer. FIGURE 2: THE ATA STANDARD HAS APPEARED in many variations over the years, so be careful to choose a hard drive that uses a version of ATA that will work with your PC. STANDARD Introduced data transfer mode Also known as Maximum burst rate (megabytes per second) The Many Names of IDE ATA-1 ATA-2 ATA-3 ATA-4 ATA-5 ATA-6 PIO mode 1 PIO mode 3, 4 Ultra DMA mode 2 Ultra DMA mode 4 Ultra DMA mode 5 No performance change; added diagnostic and security features. IDE Enhanced IDE (EIDE), Fast-ATA Ultra DMA/33, Ultra ATA/33 Ultra DMA/66, Ultra ATA/66 ATA/100, Ultra ATA/100 1 to 4 11.1, 16.7 33 66 100 r Run the new drive-installation software. Almost all hard drives ship with installation soft- ware that takes care of formatting and parti- tioning. Some even help you transfer data from your old disk to the new one. You must run most installation software before you physically install the new drive, but check the drive’s manual or installation poster. You’ll either install and run the software from within Windows, or boot from a floppy disk. Program details vary by drive man- ufacturer, so read the directions carefully. e Prepare your PC’s existing hard drive. To prevent future problems, make sure the cur- rent drive in your PC is trouble-free. Run ScanDisk (Start•Programs•Accessories•System Tools•Scan Disk) and check the Thorough test option. Then run Disk Defragmenter (Start•Programs•Accessories•System Tools•Disk Defragmenter). These tests sometimes take hours to complete if you haven’t run them before, but you’ll save time and headaches later in the installation process by ensuring that you will be copying error-free data. Next, make a full backup of your hard drive if you’re able to, or at least back up your vital data and configura- tion files from your favorite programs. Don’t forget files like normal.dot from Microsoft Word and Book- marks or Favorites from your Web browser. fers, but the overall performance differ- ence is not that dramatic because the bursts involve only tiny amounts of data. Still, if you want the best performance out of your new drive, your PC must have on-board Ultra DMA/100 support. For about $40, you can buy a card that adds Ultra DMA/100 to your PC from a com- pany like Promise (www.promise.com). Or you can just settle for the interface that your PC uses now. Because your new hard disk will be big- ger and faster than the one your PC cur- rently uses, plan on making the new drive your primary drive—the new home for your operating system and applications. You can attach the old drive as a secon- dary hard disk and use it for archives and less frequently accessed data. All major drive makers pack software with their upgrade kits that prepares the drive for data (partitioning and format- ting) and can also copy exactly what’s on your current drive to the new one, helping to make the upgrade a snap. Stan Miastkowski is a PC World con- tributing editor. t Go under the hood. Turn off your PC and unplug it before you remove the cover. And before you begin working under your PC’s hood, put on an antistatic wrist strap (available from local electron- ics supply stores) and clip it to a grounded metal object. 195 JUNE 2001 PC WORLD installing a new hard drive remains one of the most popular upgrade projects for PC users. And it’s easy to see why. Today’s drives are bigger than ever and bargain priced, and they offer a perfor- mance boost, as well. You’ll need that extra space for the increasingly roomy OS installs and gigabyte-eating applications that are the norm these days. And don’t forget graphics, audio, and video files. If your budget is limited, you can up- grade to a 20GB drive for as little as $120; a medium-size 40GB drive will set you back $150 or thereabouts. For maximum storage space, you can invest in a 60GB or 80GB behemoth, although prices for these larger drives are in the $200-to- $300 range. If you’re comfortable making the upgrade without installation software, you can save a few bucks ($10 to $30) by purchasing a bare drive. Manufacturers offer most drives in both 5400-rpm and 7200-rpm versions. While the 5400-rpm drives are slightly less ex- pensive than the 7200-rpm models, the latter deliver a genuine performance boost in the form of quicker access times and improved data transfers. JUNE 2001 194 PC WORLD PHOTOGRAPHS: MARC SIMON UPGRADE GUIDE STAN MIASTKOWSKI UPGRADE GUIDE Install a Bigger, Faster Hard Drive THE TOP DOWN Benefits: Higher capacity, better performance Cost: $100 (20GB) to $325 (80GB) Expertise level: Intermediate Time required: 1 to 2 hours Tools required: Phillips screwdriver, needle-nose pliers, antistatic wrist strap (recommended) Vendors: IBM (www.storage.ibm.com), Maxtor (www.maxtor.com), Quantum (www. quantum.com), Seagate (www.seagate. com), Western Digital (www.wdc.com) If you need… Ultra DMA/100 card: Ultra100 $40 (www.promise.com) u Set the drive jumpers. Usually, you’ll install your new drive as the sec- ond drive on the primary IDE channel (the same chan- nel where the current drive is connected). When two IDE drives are connected to a single cable, one must be desig- nated ‘Master’, and the other ‘Slave’. The jumper settings are printed on the drives. If you’ll be using the new disk as your PC’s boot drive, set its jumper to Master, and change the jumper settings on your old drive to Slave. (Check the included instal- lation software to make sure that it supports copy- ing of the data over to your new hard disk.) ឣ The newest IDE hard drives are back- ward-compatible with the Ultra DMA/66 interface found on most PCs made in the last few years. But most of today’s drives support the Ultra DMA/100 interface (alternatively called ATA/100), which offers burst transfer speeds of up to 100MB per second. In some operations, the new interface can speed up data trans- i Put it all back together. Install the new drive. Attach the two connectors on the new ribbon cable to the old and new hard disks. (It doesn’t matter which of the connectors goes where.) Make sure the red wire on the cables goes to Pin 1. Also make sure the other end of the cable is securely connected to the primary IDE connector on the motherboard, and that it’s correctly connected so that the red wire on the cable goes to Pin 1 on the motherboard connector. (A secondary IDE connector is used for things like your CD-ROM and CD-RW drives.) Plug in the power connectors to both drives. Double-check all your connections; don’t put the cover back on until you’re sure that everything’s working correctly. o Check your system’s setup program and finish up. Make sure the hard drive installation utility disk is in the floppy drive; then turn your PC on. Enter your PC’s setup utility (usually by pressing <Delete>, <F1>, or <F2> at start-up, although details vary by manufacturer). Then make sure drives 1 and 2 are set to AUTO. If they’re not, your PC may not detect your new drive. Save the setup settings, and reboot from the installation utility floppy disk. Follow the directions to set up your new drive and copy the data from the old drive to the new. Finally, remove the floppy and reboot your PC. It should start Windows normally. When you’re sure everything’s working, reformat your old drive to wipe out its superfluous data and to prepare it for new files. Find a space for the new drive. Most PC cases have an eas- ily accessible space for your new drive, usually right next to the exist- ing drive. Find the drive. Note where the red wire of the ribbon cable meets the drive (Pin 1) so you can connect the new cable correctly. (Hint: Mark the location with masking tape.) Find a free power con- nector. You need power for your new drive. If your power supply has no free connector, get a Y-adapter that turns one connection into two. Use the new cable. Current drives require an 80-wire cable for best performance, and most drives ship with one. Remove the old cable and replace it with the new one (the connectors are compatible). Check, optimize, and back up your drive(s). First, select Start•Programs•Accessories• Sys- tem Tools•ScanDisk, click Thorough, and check the Automatically fix errors box. Then click Start. Next, defragment each drive by selecting Start•Pro- grams•Accessories•System Tools•Disk Defragmenter. To u s e Windows 9x’s or Me’s built-in backup utility, select Start•Programs•Accessories•System Tools• Backup and follow the directions. (If the utility isn’t there, then for Windows 9x, check Start•Settings•Con- trol Panel•Add/Remove Programs•Windows Setup• Accessories, and for Windows Me, run Msbexp.exe from the Addons/MSBackup folder on the Me CD.) In Windows XP Professional, select Start•Control Panel• Performance and Maintenance•Back up your data. ing out XP, or even installing Linux), then you’ll absolutely need multiple partitions. Think of a partition as a container for data, like one drawer of a file cabinet. Each partition uses a file system to store and name data. Windows 98 and Me use the FAT32 file system. FAT32 allows for greater maximum partition sizes and stores data more efficiently than the FAT16 file system used by DOS and the first versions of Windows 95. Windows NT introduced the NTFS file system, which uses space more efficient- WWW.PCWORLD.COM FEBRUARY 2002 152 no matter the capacity of your PC’s hard drive, chances are that it’s set up to function as one giant data dump. Though that’s fine for most users, dividing your drive into multiple partitions (additional drive letters) can make life easier: At the least, keeping all your data—such as doc- uments, worksheets, and images—in a partition separate from the operating sys- tem and applications simplifies backups and can increase your PC’s performance. And if you plan on using multiple oper- ating systems (adding Windows 2000, try- ly and offers better data security. Win- dows 95, 98, and Me can’t “see” the data in an NTFS partition; however, Windows 2000 and XP can read from and write to both NTFS and FAT32 partitions. If you’re starting with a new, blank hard drive, partitioning is easy. The installation routines of Windows NT, 2000, and XP give you some control over partitions. Other versions of Windows come with FDISK, a basic partitioning utility that you copy to a bootable floppy. But if you want to have extensive parti- tioning options, you’ll need a utility such as Partition Commander ($40, www. v-com.com)orPartitionMagic ($69, www.powerquest.com). They offer such options as changing the size of partitions and converting from different file sys- tems. And, given enough free space, they preserve the data stored on your drive. Stan Miastkowski is a PC World contributing editor. HERE’S HOW STAN MIASTKOWSKI STEP BY STEPSTEP BY STEPSTEP BY STEP Partition Your Hard Drive PHOTOGRAPH: RICK RIZNER ឣ 1 Plan for partitions. Before you run the partitioning software, decide how you want to orga- nize your hard drive(s). Con- sider the size of the drive, whether you want to simply segregate data from the operat- ing system and applica- tions or create a more complex structure, and whether you want to run more than one OS. Read your partitioning soft- ware’s manual for suggestions. Major partitioning util- ities also have wizards that lead you through the process. 2 Run the software. Once you’ve decid- ed how to set up your partitions, follow the di- rections to install and run the partitioning soft- ware. Although the soft- ware won’t let you make incorrect choices, you should check and dou- ble-check the new partitions to make sure you’ve allocated all the drive’s space. Creating and moving partitions may take 30 minutes or more, depending on how full your drive is. The software will also format the new partitions for you. 3 Reboot and reorganize. Once the partitions are creat- ed, reboot your PC to complete the process. You can then move your data around or install a new operating sys- tem. If you plan to store all your data in one of the new par- titions, you’ll have to tell your applications where to save files in the future. Usually, you can set this from the Pref- erences menu or File Locations tab in each application. 4 Problems? If you have problems accessing or using the new partitions, use the emergency disks that came with the partitioning software to double-check that the par- titions were created and formatted. If they still don’t work, then it’s time to contact tech support. 5 Windows XP Other OS Apps Data . BIOSs that limit disks to one of these two capacities. To remedy this, either get a BIOS upgrade or buy a new disk controller card. 2GB: Any hard drive using. 95B or Windows 98, you can upgrade the disk to FAT32 using the Windows FAT32 Drive Converter Utility. You can- not use any disk utilities designed for