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Run out of room on your hard disk drive?
Want to upgrade to a bigger one?
Here’s how to do it without the software hassles.
Hard Disk Upgrades . . .
WITHOUT
reinstalling software
By GREG SWAIN
T
HE HARD DISK DRIVE that
came with your new PC might
have seemed pretty big a couple
of years ago but it's surprising how
quickly it can fill up.
Both applications and operating
systems are growing in size all the
time, so it doesn’t take long for hard
disk space to disappear, particularly
if you like downloading huge files off
the net or storing music or video files.
Not too long ago, a 1.6-2GB drive
was the standard but these are now
considered modest compared to today’s monsters. And as disk sizes have
grown, the prices have come down. A
typical 4.3GB drive can be picked up
for about $240, while a 6.4GB drive
4 Silicon Chip
will set you back around $290. The
latter is clearly the better buy if you
can afford it.
work. As a result, your work grinds to
a halt with frequent “out of memory”
or “disk full” error messages.
You need space!
Installation options
A hard disk that’s almost full not
only prevents you from adding extra
applications and files but can serious
ly degrade system performance as
well.
There are two main reasons for this.
First, the space that can be devoted
to virtual memory, so that system
RAM can be freed for other tasks,
shrinks dramatically. Second, you
can literally run out of room to store
the temporary files that are created by
Windows 95/98 applications as you
There are several options when it
comes to installing a new hard disk
drive into your PC. Most people take
the easy path and simply add the new
drive as drive D.
Assuming that the motherboard has
at least two IDE ports (primary and
secondary), the new drive can either
be slaved with the first (ie, connected to the same port) or installed as a
secondary drive on the second port.
Typically, this involves setting the
jumpers on the back of the drive to
configure it as a master or slave, according to the drive manufacturer’s
instructions. On newer drives, the
various jumper configurations are also
usually shown on the label attached
to the top of the drive.
Once the new drive has been recognised by the system BIOS, it is then
partitioned and formatted in the usual
manner.
The big advantage of this scheme
is that you don’t have to reinstall any
software. After all, it’s a real hassle
to reinstall the operating system and
all the applications, then download
and reapply any patches or upgrades.
And that’s before you even move
your work files across. It can take
many hours of work before your system is up and running again.
But what if you simply want to
replace your existing C drive with
the new drive?
There are several reasons why you
may want to do this. First, the new
drive is likely to be faster than the old
drive, so making it the boot disk will
give you better performance. Second,
you might want to remove the existing
drive altogether and use it to beef up
capacity in another machine.
So is there an easy way to transfer
everything, including the operating
system, from the existing drive to the
new drive and then make the latter
the boot drive under Windows 95/98?
The answer is “yes” and the method
is really quite straightforward.
The following procedure has been
gleaned from several sources on the
net and worked perfectly when tried
on a couple of test computers. It
assumes the use of EIDE drives and
Windows 95/98 and should work in
virtually all cases although, as with
most things to do with computers,
there are no absolute guarantees.
What you have to do is first install
the new drive as drive D, partition
and format it, and then copy across
all the files from the existing C drive.
You then reconfigure the new drive so
that it becomes the master (C:) drive,
change the CMOS settings so that the
drive is recognised and then make the
primary partition the active partition.
It sounds easy when we say it
quickly, doesn’t it? OK, let’s describe
the procedure in a little more detail.
Installing the new drive
The first step, as we’ve said, is to
install the new drive as a slave or
This hard disk drive has three sets of jumper pins for selecting the type of drive
(master or slave) and these are located between the I/O cable socket and the
power socket. In this case, the drive is jumpered as a slave (SL); the master
(MA) jumper is to its right. The third pair of jumper pins is labelled CS, which is
for a special “cable select” IDE connection cable (see panel).
secondary drive, so that it becomes
drive D. There are a couple of things
to watch out for here.
First, if you intend connecting the
new drive to the same IDE port as the
existing C drive, it must be configured
as a slave.
Second, check the jumper options
for the existing C drive. On some
drives, you will need to alter the
jumpers to change from a single (drive
used on its own) configuration to a
master configuration. On other drives,
the two configurations have the same
jumper settings.
If the new drive is used on its own
on the secondary IDE port, it must
be set to the single drive (or master)
configuration. But if there’s already
a ZIP drive or CD-ROM drive (or any
other drive) on this port, be sure to
configure one as a master and the
other as a slave.
Once the new drive is in, turn
the PC on and load the CMOS setup
program (on most PCs, press Del as
it does its memory check).
You now have to load the new
drive’s settings into the system BIOS
at the Drive D line. In most cases, all
you have to do is set the drive type to
“Auto” (for auto-detect) and the mode
to “LBA” (logical block addressing),
leaving all other fields blank.
This will allow the computer to
automatically detect the drive and
determine its settings. If your system
BIOS doesn’t support auto detect and
LBA, you will have to manually enter
the number of cylinders, heads and
sectors per track into the appropriate
fields.
BIOS disk limits
It’s here that you may run into BIOS
limitation problems. Many older BIOSes, particularly on 486 (and lesser)
machines, are unable to recognise
disk sizes above 528MB, while some
BIOSes cannot recognise disk sizes
beyond 2.1GB or 3.27GB. In addition,
many recent BIOSes cannot recognise
disk sizes larger than 8.4GB.
One way around this problem is to
use a BIOS translation program such
as Ontrack’s Disk Manager. Sometimes, this software will be supplied
with the new disk drive. If not, it can
usually be downloaded from the drive
manufacturer’s web site.
Western Digital, for example, have a
utility called EZ-Drive (available from
www.wdc.com/support). This utility
allows you to correctly partition and
format a Western Digital drive, so
that your system BIOS recognises its
full capacity.
Another way around the problem is
to get a BIOS upgrade from the PC’s
manufacturer or from the motherboard manufacturer (check their web
sites). Yet another option is to upgrade
the motherboard.
We’ll assume here that your BIOS
supports auto detect and LBA, and
that the drive is correctly recognised.
JUNE 1999 5
Table 1: Hard Disk Sizes & BIOS/Operating System Limitations
Disk Size
BIOS Issues
>528MB
Ol der BIOSes do not
recognise drives bi gger
than 528MB. Requi res the
use of BIOS transl ati ng
software (eg, Ontrack's
Disk Manager).
>2.1GB
>4.3GB
>8.4GB
Windows 95a
Windows 95b/98
Windows NT
FAT16 par ti ti ons are
Suppor ts FAT32 par ti ti ons.
Some BIOSes do not
FAT16 par ti ti ons are
Large hard disk drives
recognise par ti ti ons greater limi ted to 2.1GB. Drives
larger than 2.1GB requi re
limi ted to 2.1GB.
can be par ti ti oned and
than 2.1GB.
mul ti pl e par ti ti ons.
formatted as a si ngl e drive,
provi ded there are no
FAT16 par ti ti ons are
BIOS limi tati ons.
FAT16 par ti ti ons are
limi ted to 2.1GB. Drives
limi ted to 2.1GB. An NTFS
larger than 2.1GB requi re
boot par ti ti on is limi ted to
mul ti pl e par ti ti ons.
4.2GB. NTFS par ti ti ons
FAT16 par ti ti ons are
other than the boot
Most BIOSes don't
par ti ti on can be greater
recognise par ti ti ons greater limi ted to 2.1GB. Drives
larger than 2.1GB requi re
than 4.2GB.
than 8.4GB.
mul ti pl e par ti ti ons.
When you enter the information for
the new drive (or allow the computer
to auto detect it), make a note of the
settings for both the existing drive and
the new drive (just in case!), then save
and exit the CMOS setup.
Partitioning & formatting
The next step is to partition and
format the new drive. To do this,
load Windows 95/98, then restart the
computer in MS-DOS mode (click
Start, Shut Down, select “Restart the
computer in MS-DOS mode?” and
click Yes).
Now, at the DOS prompt, enter fdisk
and follow the on-screen menus to
partition the new drive.
It’s absolutely vital here that you
first choose option 5 (Change Current
Fixed Disk Drive) and specify the
drive that you want to partition (ie,
the new drive). If you only previously
had one hard disk drive, the new drive
becomes drive 2 and this is the one to
specify. Don’t attempt to repartition
your current drive (drive 1). If you do,
you will erase the contents of the disk
and that’s just what you don’t want.
Having selected the new drive for
partitioning, select menu option 1 to
create a primary DOS partition. The
maximum partition size that can be
created depends on your operating
system, so you may also have to create
extended partitions to access the full
capacity of the disk.
Windows 95a uses the FAT16 file
system, which limits partition sizes
to 2.1GB. This means that if you are
partitioning a 4.3GB drive, you would
have to make two partitions: a primary DOS partition of 2.1GB and an
extended DOS partition also of 2.1GB.
You can, of course, divide the drive
into smaller partitions if you wish but
Fig.1: creating a Startup Disk. This is required for making
the primary partition on the new drive the active partition.
6 Silicon Chip
note that you must create a primary
DOS partition, otherwise the drive
will not boot.
By contrast, Windows 95b and
Windows 98 both support the FAT32
file system. This means that you can
partition and format even the largest
hard disks as a single drive (in theory,
up to two terabytes, or 2TB).
Another advantage of FAT32 is that
it uses much smaller cluster sizes than
FAT16 and this saves hard disk space.
Provided you have Windows 95b or
Windows 98, it’s quite easy to create
a FAT32 partition – just type fdisk at
the DOS prompt and answer “Y” to
the on-screen prompt “Do you wish
to enable large disk support? Y or N”.
You then select the new fixed disk
and create a primary DOS partition
in exactly the same manner as for a
FAT16 system.
Once the new disk has been parti-
Fig.2: make sure that you include all switches in your
xcopy command when copying across the files from the
old drive to the new drive. By the way, the same command
works for copying files between floppies or between a
CD-ROM and a hard disk drive, ensuring you get all files
including the hidden ones.
tioned it must be formatted. Reboot
the computer (this must be done for
the changes to take effect), return
to MS-DOS mode and (at the DOS
prompt) type:
format d:/s
This will format the new drive and
copy across the system files to the primary DOS partition. If you have one
or more extended partitions as well,
these will have to be formatted separately (but without the /s switch) to
provide the additional logical drives.
If the drive is formatted using EZDrive or similar software, you may
have to transfer the system files to
the new disk using the sys (system)
command. To do this, type: sys d: and
press <Enter>.
Creating a startup disk
You now have to create a Windows
95/98 Startup (boot) Disk. Allow
Windows to load, then click Start, Settings, Control Panel and double-click
the Add/Remove Programs icon.
Next, click the Startup Disk tab,
then click the Create Disk button
and follow the prompts – see Fig.1.
Label the new Startup Disk and put
it to one side. It will be used later on
to boot the computer, after the drives
are swapped.
Copying the files
Before copying the files across to
the new drive, shut down all running
applications. It’s also a good idea to
shut down (or disable) any utilities
in your System Tray (at the righthand
end of the Taskbar).
You’re now ready to copy everything
“CS” or Cable Select Jumpers
On most hard disk drives, you will find a pair of jumpers marked “CS”. This stands
for Cable Select and is a very handy way of automatically selecting which drive is the
master and which the slave.
Cable Select uses a special hard disk connecting cable (standard IDE hard disk
cables CANNOT be used). It looks similar but has the disk connectors clearly marked,
sometimes drive 1 and drive 2; sometimes master and slave.
The drives are simply connected to the appropriate connectors. If you want to
make your master the slave (and vice versa) you just swap the connectors over. It’s
that simple. So why is this simple system not used very much?
It could be because CS cables are not easy to obtain. But if you can find one, it
makes life easy!
across from the C drive to the new D
drive and to do this we use the xcopy
command with a number of switches.
To copy the files, click Start, Run
and type:
xcopy c:\*.* /e/h/k/r/c d:
and click OK. This command instructs your system to copy all the
files across, including:
(1) all subdirectories, even if they are
empty (the /e switch)
(2) all files with hidden and system
file attributes (/h); and
(3) all read-only files with the read-only attribute retained (/k/r). The /c
switch instructs the system to ignore
errors.
Depending on how many files you
have on your existing hard disk, this
operation could take quite some time.
Swapping the drives
Now shut down Windows 95/98,
turn off the computer and change the
jumper settings so that the new drive
Variations
If you prefer, you can install the new
disk as drive C first, then boot from a
startup disk and run fdisk to partition it
(making the primary active). It can then
be formatted, after which you reinstall
the old drive as C and configure the new
drive as D before copying the files across.
The advantage of this method it that
you only have to run fdisk once. The
disadvantage is that more drive swapping
is involved.
Another variation is to copy the files
across using the Windows Explorer. Before
doing this, you must first set the Explorer
to show all files (click View, Options,
Show all files), otherwise hidden/system
files won’t copy across. You must also
configure the system so that the swap file
is on the new D drive (go Control Panel,
System, Performance, Virtual Memory,
select “Let me choose my own virtual
memory settings” and select the D drive).
Reboot so that the changes take effect,
then click (C:) in the lefthand pane of the
Windows Explorer, click Edit, Select All,
Copy and paste it into the D drive. Finally,
restore the original swap file setting (ie,
“Let windows manage my virtual memory
settings”) when you boot from the new
drive.
becomes the master drive. The old
drive can either be removed or con
figured as the slave/secondary drive.
Next, insert the Startup Disk into
the floppy drive, turn on the PC and
edit the CMOS settings for the hard
disk drives to reflect the changes just
made. Save these settings, then continue booting with the Startup Disk.
If you find your computer fails to
boot from the floppy disk, it may be
that the CMOS setup has been told
to boot from the C drive only. In this
case, it will be necessary to edit the
CMOS setup so that the system boots
from a floppy disk.
You will find an option somewhere
in the CMOS setup which allows you
to select which drive the machine
boots from.
Making the partition active
Once the machine has booted to
the A: prompt, type fdisk (this utility will be on the Startup Disk) and
select option 2 to make the primary
partition on the new hard disk drive
the active partition. Whatever you do,
don’t change the primary partition
size or you will lose all information
on the disk.
Next, exit fdisk, remove the floppy
disk and reboot. Your system should
now boot Windows 95/98 from the
new hard disk. What’s more, your
system should be exactly the same as
before, with all settings and applications intact.
Finally, if you were previously
having problems with your system,
the above procedure will copy those
same problems to the new drive. If
your system is corrupted, the best
approach would be to use the new
hard disk as an excuse for a fresh
SC
installation.
JUNE 1999 7
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