Installing and Configuring PC Components
Internal Hard Drives
Internal hard drives are used to store your operating system, applications, and data. Installing a new hard drive is a fairly simple process – whether you are replacing, upgrading, or adding a new hard drive.
The type of hard drive determines how you can install it. If you hard drive is an IDE drive, IDE supports a maximum of 2 drives per channel (most computers have two channels supporting four total drives). SCSI and SATA have different requirements.
You have a couple different choices for drive configurations:
IDE 0 Hard drive 1
IDE 1 Hard drive 2
IDE 2 CD-ROM drive
IDE 3 Open
Or
IDE 0 Hard drive 1
IDE 1 CD-ROM drive
IDE 2 Hard drive 2
IDE 3 Open
If you have more than two hard drives or dual CD/DVD drives, you will have to consider a different combination.
How to Install an IDE Hard Drive
1. Shut down the computer and power it off.
2. Unplug the power supply.
3. Wear an ESD wrist.
4. Open the computer case.
5. If you are replacing a hard drive, find it in the system.
§ Unplug the IDE cable and the power cable.
§ Remove the drive from the drive cage.
§ Attach the new drive into the drive cage.
§ Plug in the IDE cable and power cable.
6. If you are adding a second drive, find an open spot in the drive cage.
§ Attach the new drive into the drive cage.
§ Plug in the second IDE port on the cable and a power cable.
§ Close the case of the PC.
7. Plug the PC back in and turn it on.
Most newer PCs feature a BIOS which will automatically detect and configure the PC for the new hard drive. If yours does not, you will need to enter the BIOS to configure it for a second hard drive.
Replacing an IDE Hard Drive: http://www.fonerbooks.com/r_hard.htm
External Hard Drives
External hard drives are in cases and typically connect through one or more of these connection types (in order of popularity): USB, Firewire (IEEE1394), Ethernet, eSATA, SCSI, or wireless. Some drives have multiple connection ports so you can pick and choose based on your requirements – e.g. transfer speed, open ports on your computer.
Figure 15: 320GB External Hard Drive
External hard drives come in a variety of sizes (as of November, 2007 they range from 20Gb to 2TB) and drive configurations – common external hard drives come with one or two hard drives. Many external hard drives with two drives offer RAID 0 and RAID 1 configurations for continuous volume and redundancy purposes, respectively.
Figure 16: External HD with IEE1394 and USB Ports
Many external hard drives come with backup software and “one touch” backup – you press a button on the hard drive and it notifies the backup software to begin backing up the system.
Installing an External Hard Drive
Installing external hard drives is one of the easiest tasks on newer systems – most come preformatted and ready to go right out of the box – you simply plug it in. Windows will automatically recognize the external hard drive and mount it.
Formatting Drives
Before you can use your new hard drive, you need to format it. You can format it several different ways. First, you need to create a new partition in Windows XP or Windows Vista.
Creating a Partition
1. Open Computer Management – right click on My Computer and select Manage.
2. You will see the new disk below.
3. Right-click on the new disk and select Initialize if it is not yet initialized.
4. Right-click on the new disk and select Create New Partition.
5. Click the Next button.
6. Select your partition size – unless you want multiple partitions, leave it as is and click Next.
7. Select the drive letter and click Next.
8. Label the drive and click Next.
9. Next, Windows will format the drive.
10. Once it is finished formatting, it will display in Disk Management.
Formatting a Hard Drive
1. Open a command prompt (click Start, select Run, type in cmd, click OK).
2. Type in format x: where x: is the drive letter you want to format.
3. Press Enter.
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