Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!rice!uw-beaver!mit-eddie!bbn.com!mips2!fhr!stagu
From: stagu@fhr (Steve Tague)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc
Subject: Re: How does one install an IDE drive?
Message-ID: <1991Mar15.154231.2118@mips2.cr.bull.com>
Date: 15 Mar 91 15:42:31 GMT
References: <80330016@hpl-opus.hpl.hp.com> <1991Mar11.204553.6597@DRD.Com>
Sender: @mips2.cr.bull.com
Reply-To: stagu@fhr (Steve Tague)
Organization: Bull HN Informations Systems Inc.
Lines: 58

1.) You need an appropriate IDE interface either on the bus or on your
mother board.  I have been told that there are more than one kind of IDE
interfaces available so checking for compatability is important.

2.) You need the appropriate mounting kit for the bay in which you
intend to install drive.

3.) You need a power tap, either a spare from the power supply or a Y
connector.

4.) You need the IDE cable.

5.) Get from the salesperson a manual or facts as to the:

	Number of cylinders
	Number of heads
	Number of sectors per track
	(Unlikely to be other than 512 but--Number of bytes per sector)

6.) Look at either the documentation on your PC or rummage in the ROM
BIOS to see what combinations of Cyl/Head/Sectors are understood by your
BIOS.  If you are lucky, you have a ROM BIOS that supports a USER
defined disk configuration.  Idealy you want to find a pre-canned
configuration that exactly matches the numbers in step 5.  If you are
unlucky like I was, pick the entry with the number of heads and number
of sectors that match that of the drive and has a cylinder count LESS
THAN the number for the drive--this looses some of the disk but you
won't BREAK YOUR DRIVE.  [This is AT type info, XT's don't have ROM BIOS
configuration stuff like this].

7.) Make a bootable floppy with your RESTORE program, FDISK, SETUPPC(if
not in ROM or the equivalent program for updating CMOS) and FORMAT available.

8.) Back-up your old drive if you are replacing it--DO IT EVEN IF YOUR NOT.

9.) Install the drive and cables.

10).Power up the machine.  It takes a LONG time for the mis-match
between the CMOS configuration and the new hardware to time-out and give
a warning.  Boot from floppy and run SETUPPC (or equivalent, or use
alternate BOOT method to get ROM SETUP) to select the drive
configuration code determined in step 6.

11).Reboot from floppy.  This should work quicker if the configuration
code is close to correct.

12).Run FDISK to partition your drive.  Unless you use DOS4.0, a drive
letter cannot represent more than 32MB.  Even with DOS4.0 avoid creating
a drive letter with more than 32MB unless you really need one volume of
that size as this forces the RESIDENT LOADING of SHARE in the 640K region.

13).Run FORMAT on all logical partitions to which you have assigned a
drive letter.

14).Restore your saved data.

GOOD LUCK.
Steve