Just have a scrapped notebook hard drive in hand, today i will open the drive to take a look at the internal components of the hard drive, through this article to show how to open a laptop hard drive. (See also: How to Open a Desktop Hard Drive) Open a Laptop Hard Drive The removal…
To start Disk Management:
How to create a new partition or a new logical drive:
To create a new partition or logical drive on a basic disk:
Solid state drives (SSD): used in the enterprise are data storage devices that use non-moving fl ash memory technology rather than rotating magnetic disks or optical media. SSDs are compatible with traditional hard drive interfaces, such as SATA or SAS, and have a familiar hard drive form factor, such as 3.5-, 2.5- or 1.8-inch.
USB Flash Drive: consists of a flash memory data storage device integrated with a USB (Universal Serial Bus) interface. USB flash drives are typically removable and rewritable, and physically much smaller than a floppy disk. Most weigh less than 30 g (1 oz). Storage capacities in 2010 can be as large as 256 GB with steady improvements in size and price per capacity expected. Some allow 1 million write or erase cycles and have a 10-year data retention cycle.
USB flash drives are often used for the same purposes as floppy disks were. They are smaller, faster, have thousands of times more capacity, and are more durable and reliable because of their lack of moving parts. Until approximately 2005, most desktop and laptop computers were supplied with floppy disk drives, but most recent equipment has abandoned floppy disk drives in favor of USB ports.
USB Flash Drives Vs Solid State Drives
Both USB flash drives and SSDs use NAND fl ash memory. However, it’s the quality of NAND used—as well as the controller and interface involved—that separates a simple USB fl ash drive from an enterprise-class storage device, like those found in blade servers and external storage systems.
Solid State Drives Vs Hard Drives
Today’s SSDs are different from hard drives when it comes to data storage. SSDs are sophisticated storage devices that use non-moving memory chips, mostly non-volatile NAND fl ash, instead of the rotating magnetic disks found in hard drives. Hard drives can take the data directly from the host and write it to the rotating media. In contrast, SSDs can’t write a single bit of information without first erasing and then rewriting very large blocks of data at one time (also referred to as P/E).
Because SSDs and hard drives have different strengths in terms of effi ciency, they complement each other and can co-exist. SSDs deliver ultra-fast random data access (inputs-outputs per second, or IOPS, performance), low power consumption, small size and high physical resilience (due to no moving parts)— but they cost more. Hard drives provide fast sequential data access with high capacity, endurance and reliability at a much lower price.
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A hard drive can be divided into primary and extended partitions. Partitions function as physically separate storage units. This allows you to separate different types of information, such as user data on one partition and applications on another. A hard drive can contain up to four primary partitions, or up to three primary partitions and one extended partition, for a maximum of four partitions.
There can be only one extended partition on a hard disk, so you should include all remaining free space in the extended partition. Unlike primary partitions, you don’t format extended partitions or assign drive letters to them. You divide extended partitions into segments. Each segment is a logical drive. You assign a drive letter to each logical drive and format it with a file system.
For more information about Disk Management in Windows 2000 and how to use it to setup your hard drive, please see Microsoft Article 323967
For more information about Disk Management in Windows XP and Windows Vista and how to use it to setup your hard drive, please see Microsoft Article 309000
DOS and DOS based programs like Windows 3.x and Windows 95 cannot access drives over 1024 cylinders on their own, but require third party assistance to use large hard drives. SCSI drives handle this with drivers built in to the SCSI controller, so we will limit this discussion to ATA hard drives. There are several methods used to overcome the cylinder limitation, and all of them involve translation.
A translation scheme converts information from one form to another and back again. Think of it like this: If you go to a foreign country to conduct business and you don’t speak the language, you need a translator. The translator’s job is to convert information from one party into a language the other party can understand and vice versa. Without the services of a translator, the two parties have a limited exchange of information. A smile, a nod, and a mispronounced and grammatically incorrect “How are you?” is about all that is possible.
The types of translation support are as follows:
1. An ATA (IDE) host adapter with a BIOS that provides large drive support.
2. Third party software like EZ-Drive® and DiscWizard Starter Edition.
3. A motherboard BIOS that provides large drive support. Some of the terminology is as follows:
These support features are the “language” translators that allow your operating system and hardware to speak two different “languages” and still interact successfully with one another.
All of the BIOS options, once installed, are transparent to the user. EZ-Drive and DiscWizard Starter Edition are not. In addition, there is one issue that both share — special procedures are needed to boot to a diskette when installing new software.
Dynamic Drive Overlay software like EZ-Drive and DiscWizard Starter Edition use similar techniques, at first glance, to overcome the 1024 cylinder limitation. Both programs load proprietary translation information on the boot hard drive that identifies which drive is using the program and gives the operating system access to the area of the drive over 1024 cylinders. Without this proprietary translation code loaded, the drive using EZ-Drive or DiscWizard Starter Edition is unrecognizable to the operating system. If the hard drive is using translating software, and you try to boot with an unmodified diskette in the floppy drive, the translating software does not get a chance to load, thereby rendering the hard drive unreadable. This is generally only a problem if the diskette is infected with a virus. Simply remove the diskette and reboot. The hard drive should boot normally.
The most commonly asked questions about the system BIOS and its relationship to hard drives. The following will provide you with basic information beginning with the definition of a BIOS, to identifying key features found in various BIOS’s. The purpose of this document is to aid you in solving minor difficulties you may be currently experiencing.
1. What is Logical Block Addressing (LBA)?
LBA is a mathematical scheme for addressing sectors, beginning at cylinder 0, head 0 and sector 1, which is equal to LBA 1. This scheme linearly maps the drive until the final physical sector is reached. LBA is efficient because it reduces some system overhead by not having to convert the operating system’s LBA to the BIOS CHS and then back to drive LBA.
2. What is CHS?
CHS stands for Cylinders, Heads and Sectors, this is the conventional means for BIOS to communicate to the drive. CHS has a limitation of 1,024 cylinders, 16 heads and 63 sectors per track resulting in a maximum capacity of 504 MB.
3. What is the difference between Normal, LBA or Large mode?
Normal mode is the standard BIOS translation scheme. This mode does not support drives greater than 504 MB. Large mode is a generic translation scheme used by some BIOS’s to access drives up to 1 GB. Logical Block Addressing (LBA) mode is a more advanced method of translation than Large mode. LBA mode is a somewhat faster and can see drives up to 8 GB.
4. What if the BIOS does not support the full capacity of the drive?
There are three possible answers to this question:
5. Why use software for translation?
Software translation is an effective, although non-conventional, means of translating large capacity hard drives so they can be utilized on older systems with older motherboards and BIOS’s. We use Maxtor hard drives almost exclusively, and they (Maxtor) furnish a driver made by StorageSoft, which is called MaxBlast. Instead of loading a driver in the start-up files, MaxBlast loads drivers before the operating system is loaded.
6. Can a hard drive be transferred to another computer without losing data?
Generally speaking no, but there are exceptions to everything. Usually there are no guarantees that a new motherboard’s BIOS will use the same translation scheme as its predecessor. We recommend that you back up your data prior to making any system changes. We also recommend that the hard drive be re-partitioned and reformatted once installed in the new system.
7. Can the translation mode or parameters in the BIOS be changed?
When a drive is partitioned, the operating system interprets the size of the drive via information provided by the BIOS. Changing the translation can cause permanent data corruption. If the original parameters are changed, they usually cannot be recovered without specialized drive manipulation software. If you do not have this software, we recommend that the hard drive be re-partitioned and reformatted.
Why is my new drive recognized in the system BIOS but has no drive letter assigned to it in Windows?
Before the operating system can recognize the drive and assign it a drive letter, you must partition and format the drive. New hard drives are rarely pre-partitioned by the manufacturer. There are three options to formatting and partitioning the drive:
The following methods can help determine what kind of hard disk you have inside your computer.
1. Seatools For Windows
Seatools for Windows can detect all hard drives connected to your computer.
2. Device Manager
a) Users running Microsoft 2000, XP, or Vista
Microsoft Windows users can easily determine the type of hard drive that is currently installed in their computer by following the below steps.
Note: This will not show the serial number of the drive, just the model number.
b) Users running Apple’s Mac OS X
Follow these steps to open Disk Utility.
c) IBM-compatible users
Users of IBM-compatible machines can usually enter the computer’s CMOS to view additional information about their hard disk drive. Commonly, the CMOS will list the drive’s serial number and/or model number, cylinders, heads, sectors, and/or the size of the drive.
If the CMOS is not configured to auto-detect the drive, it is important to note that the drive values may not be correct. All modern drives should be set for automatic detection.
3. Disk utilities
Many disk utilities designed to setup the hard disk drive will properly detect and setup a drive; in addition, they may also provide the user with some basic additional information about the drive.
For example, using the FDISK utility, you can display additional information about the size of the hard drive and partition information.
4. Other methods of determining the type of hard disk drive
One of the best methods for determining additional information about a hard drive is to check the sticker or label on the drive’s top. The majority of hard drive labels will list not only the RPM of the hard drive but other useful information, usually including the model, kit, serial, and/or part number(s). Turn off the computer and physically open it to see if this information is visible on the drive label. If you are unable to locate the information you need through software, it is recommended you open the case and remove the drive to get the information you need.
Determining the speed or RPM of a hard disk drive
To determine the speed or RPM of a hard drive, you must first determine the manufacturer and model of the drive. Once you’ve determined this information, you can lookup the drive on the manufacturer’s website to determine its RPM.
