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General Hard Drive FAQ Sheet
This document was last modified on Friday, 7-Mar-97 15:22:00 PDT
- Will a Caviar ® drive work in my system?
- Do I have to do anything with my original drive
when adding a new drive to my system?
- I installed my new Caviar drive and entered the drive parameters in the CMOS, but the drive will not boot or it displays the message "HDD controller failure." Why?
- What are the master/slave jumper settings on Western
Digital drives?
- What is the drive type and the drive parameters
in the CMOS, for Western Digital drives?
- CHKDSK or SCANDISK report a few bad sectors. How
do I go about fixing the problem?
- Drive will not partition when I run FDISK. It
hangs the system or it displays the message: "Runtime error." What does this mean?
- I want to add a hard drive to my new system which includes a partitioned 2.5GB drive (C and D). When I installed the drive in my system my drive letters are changed. The D partition on the new drive becomes E. Can I change drive letters or can I install without this problem?
- My Caviar drive will work as a slave but not as a master (or vice versa). Why?
- I have two Western Digital hard drives in my computer. When I turn on the computer, only the first hard drive shows up. If I soft boot (Ctrl/Alt/Del), then both show up. How do I get both to show up the first time?
- CMOS, FDISK and File Manager in Windows report
less than the capacity of my new drive, but CHKDSK reports the right number
of bytes. Which is correct?
- Can a hard drive and a CD-ROM be installed on the same EIDE data cable ? If so, will this arrangement degrade the performance of the hard drive in any way?
- My Caviar drive is larger than 528 megs. How do I get the full capacity of my drive?
- What are the differences between Western Digital's overlay 1 and overlay 2 programs? When should each one be used?
- What is EIDE (Enhanced IDE), and what are the current features of EIDE?
- What is the difference between AC31600 and AC21600?
- What is the difference between EIDE and Fast-ATA?
- I had to use EZ Drive which partitioned the new drive using drive letters (D) and (E). My CD ROM used to be assigned drive letter (D). I changed the "LASTDRIVE=D" to read "LASTDRIVE=F in the CONFIG.SYS file, but the system still does not let me use my CD ROM. What should I do?
- What is LBA (Logical Block Addressing)?
- Is there anything that might cause my hard drive electrical problems?
- How come I'm getting "out of disk space" message after loading in 800 MB of data on my 1 GB drive?
If your computer is 100% IBM AT compatible and it has a 40-pin IDE interface connector on the motherboard or an IDE host adapter, a Caviar drive should work in your system.
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Most likely, yes. One hard drive must be designated as the master drive (preferably the new Caviar drive) and the other as the slave drive. For the non Caviar hard drive please contact the appropriate manufacturer from the list below:
| Conner | 408) 456-3200 |
| IBM | 914) 765-1900 |
| Maxtor | 408) 432-1700 |
| Quantum | 408) 894-4000 |
| Seagate | 408) 438-8222 |
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First , you must partition and format the drive. Boot off of a bootable diskette, run Fdisk to partition your drive and then format it using Format.com.
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All Western Digital Caviar drives are configured the same. Jumper pins 5 to 6 for master. Jumper pins 3 to 4 for slave.
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Drive parameters (cylinders, heads and sectors per track) are printed on the drive label for your convenience. Precompensation (Precomp) and Landing zone (L-Zone) should be set equal to the drive's cylinders + 1. Select user type or custom type for your drive since this is the type which will allow you to enter your own parameters. Older systems that do not offer user type can either upgrade the BIOS or set the drive to drive type 1 (which perhaps is a small drive) and run Disk Manager or EZ-Drive from A drive to get the full capacity of the drive. Otherwise you would be limited to the biggest size drive your BIOS would allow. Here is a complete list of drive parameters for all hard disks manufactured by Western Digital.
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You can use the Western Digital defect management utility. The utility is Wdatide.exe.
One of the options is the comprehensive surface analysis. It will mark
all grown defects bad (if needed) and it will compensate for the lost capacity by utilizing the spare tracks.
NOTE: This utility is data destructive. Back up data before use. Due to the sensitive operation, Wdatide.exe could take quite a bit of time depending on the capacity of your drive.
We recommend using Wddiag.exe as your day-to-day utility. You can still use Scandisk or any other disk utility, however, Wddiag and other Western Digital software alike, are engineered to work with your Caviar drives. Hence we recommend using our Allstar utilities rather than your off the shelf software.
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This is usually caused by corruption or damage to track zero. Use the
utility Wd_clear.exe to format drive. If that does not help, call Western Digital Technical support at 1-800-ASK-4-WDC for further instructions.
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IDE hard drives are BIOS supported. All DOS based operating systems (including Windows) assign drive letters to the Primary DOS partitions first, then the Extended and Logical partitions are assigned drive letters. DOS will not allow you to change drive letters. The only way to get the drives to read in order is to create only Extended with Logical partitions on the slave drive. However, there is a drawback to creating only extended partitions on the slave drive. Should you ever decide to make the slave drive a master or only drive in the system, you will not be able to boot to the drive. DOS based operating systems (including Windows) can only boot to a primary DOS partition.
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Check master/slave jumpers.
Also, some drive's speed and timing differ drastically as to the initial
spin up sequence. This might confuse the system where one of the drives
may not be recognized. The best solution for this situation is to make
either drive the master or the slave until there is a combination the
system will accept.
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If the hard drive boots on a warm boot but not on a cold boot, this can imply a BIOS timing problem. The BIOS may be attempting to access the hard drive before the drive has initialized. Check the BIOS setup screen for any of the following options and set them as designated:
- Quick Power on Self Test ( disable )
- Fast Boot Option ( disable )
- Hard Disk Initialization time out (set this to 30 )
- Above 1 MB or any Ram Count option ( enable )
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Setup (CMOS) and FDISK use 1,048,576 bytes per megabyte (sometimes referred to as a "binary meg"). Hard disk manufactures and CHKDSK define 1,000,000 bytes to be a decimal megabyte. This is why some utilities show 515 MB for a 540 megabyte drive and some show the actual number as the table below demonstrates:
| Model | AC2850 | AC21200 | AC32100 |
| Capacity (MB) | 853.6 | 1281.9 | 2111.8 |
| CMOS (MB) | 814.1 | 1222.3 | 2035.6 |
| CHKDSK (MB) | 853.6 | 1281.9 | 2111.8 |
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An EIDE hard drive and an EIDE CD-ROM can be connected on the same cable. The drive should be jumpered as Master and jumper the CD-ROM as Slave. Installing a CD-ROM on the same cable as the hard drive can cause a reduction of performance in the hard drive.
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You can use EZ-Drive to obtain full capacity if your system does not support LBA mode. If your system supports LBA, then enable LBA in your BIOS setup utility.
NOTE: Some BIOSs, despite having LBA, cannot support a drive greater than 2.1 gigs and some cannot support a drive greater than 4 gigs. In this case, you can use EZ-Drive to overcome this limitation and gain full capacity of your drive. Another option is to check with your motherboard manufacturer to see if a BIOS upgrade is available for your system.
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Overlay1.exe and overlay2.exe are firmware updates for specific drive model numbers.
Overlay1.exe covers the following drive models:
AC32500H CCC: F1
AC32100H CCC: F1
AC31600H CCC: A1, A2, B0, B1, B2, B3
AC21600H CCC: F1
AC21200H CCC: E0, E1
AC21000H CCC: A1, A2, B0, B1, B2, E0,
Overlay2.exe covers the following drives models:
AC11000
AC22100
AC32500
AC33100
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Based on extensive experience with IDE, in 1993 Western Digital introduced a proposal for a new, but compatible, extension to the standard. Because this extension was an enhancement of the existing IDE standard and fully backward compatible, it was termed Enhanced IDE (EIDE). The new standard includes an expanded drive command and register set. The new command and register set ensures that the older systems (without EIDE) will work with the new EIDE drives. When systems are upgraded with only a new hard disk drive, they must contend with the well-known limitations of the standard IDE connection. These limitations can be overcome by upgrading other system components such as the IDE controller and system BIOS. Whenever an EIDE hard disk drive is used to upgrade a system it makes sense to choose only system components that support EIDE.
EIDE consists of a more powerful feature set and extension to the existing IDE standard: Higher capacities for hard disk drives:
- up to 8.4 GB per device
- BIOS translation
- IDE Logical Block Addressing
Up to 4 devices per system
- including CD-ROM and tape drives
Faster host data transfer rates
- Mode 3 and Mode 4 PIO (flow control)
Easier set-up and auto-detection of hard disk drive features less expensive and more compatible way to connect other peripherals such as CD-ROM and tape drives Maintain "Plug and Play" compatibility, first achieved by IDE.
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16: What is the difference between AC31600 and AC21600?
The AC31600 and the AC21600 are the same as far as performance is concerned. The AC 21600 is a newer drive that incorporates the latest drive electronics and a higher media density.
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17: What is the difference between EIDE and Fast-ATA?
Fast-ATA (faster transfer modes, like PIO mode 4) is a subset of Enhanced
IDE which indicates the ability to run at higher transfer rates. Fast-ATA
does not include all of the features of EIDE and primarily focuses on faster host data transfer rates (which is only one of the Enhanced IDE components).
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18: I had to use EZ Drive which partitioned the new drive using drive letters (D) and (E). My CD ROM used to be assigned drive letter (D). I changed the "LASTDRIVE=D" to read "LASTDRIVE=F in the CONFIG.SYS file, but the system still does not let me use my CD ROM. What should I do?
Most likely you will have to re-install your CD-ROM installation software. Try adding a switch at the end of your MSCDEX statement in your Autoexec.bat file. /L:x The x represents the drive letter for the CD-ROM.
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19: What is LBA (Logical Block Addressing)?
LBA (logical block addressing) is an addressing scheme to get past the 528 megabyte limit imposed on the current addressing standard of an IDE disk drive. There are other addressing schemes in the market seen usually in recent BIOS manufactures extended CMOS setup. Examples of others are:
- ECHS (Extended Cylinder, Head, Sector addressing scheme and sometimes seen as just "CHS" listed in the CMOS setup)
- Large
- Big IDE
All of which achieve the same end results as LBA but are not as widely used.
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Yes, recently there have been a number of Y power adapters on the market that are incorrectly wired. Y power adapters are used to expand a computer systems power availability. They consist of a clear plastic plug with 4 metal prongs on one end (this end attaches to an existing power connector within your computer) and 2 sets of wires leading to 2 plugs with female connections on the other ends (these ends are attached to internal devices such as hard drives, CD-ROM drives etc). The problem with some of these newer connectors are that the wires are attached incorrectly on one of the female connectors, and using this connecter can cause severe damage to any device attached to it.
To check the Y power adapter for incorrect wiring, examine both female connectors. Make certain that both of the female connectors are lined up with the 2 chamfered (rounded) corners facing up and both of the squared corners facing down. The 4 wires attached to the female connectors should now be in the following order from left to right:
Yellow (12 V), Black (ground), Black (ground), Red (5 V)
If this order is reversed on one of the connectors, then your Y power adapter is faulty and should not be used. Properly manufactured Y power connectors can be purchased your local computer dealer or Western Digital Technical Support department.
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In DOS, every file that is stored gets at least one allocation unit (called a "cluster") no matter what the size of the file is. The size of the cluster grows incrementally with the size of the
partition. If you have a 1.08 gig partition, the cluster size will
be 32k. This means that even a 62 byte batch file is going to
consume 32k of storage space (the difference between the 32k of the
cluster and the 22 bytes that the file really needs is called "slack
space"). The only feasible way to reduce the cluster size is to
reduce the partition size. The break down for DOS 4 and above is as
follows:
| Partition size | Sector/cluster | Cluster size |
| 0 - 15MB | 8 | 4K |
| 16 - 127MB | 4 | 2K |
| 128 - 255MB | 8 | 4K |
| 256 - 511MB | 16 | 8K |
| 512 - 1023MB | 32 | 16K |
| 1024 - 2145MB | 64 | 32K |
NOTE: There is no listing for cluster size for partitions greater than 2.1 GB since the 2.1 GB partition limit is imposed by the maximum number of clusters and the largest cluster size supported by the FAT16 file system. To utilize drives larger than 2.1GB under FAT16 file system, you need to create additional partitions.
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