Serial ATA cables are available in many lengths up to 1 meter. Minimum cable length is 12 inches, using shorter cables can cause timing, or noise interference on the cable. The same conditions apply to cables that are too long. Though the Serial ATA specification calls out supporting cable lengths up to 1 meter or 39.37 inches, PCB traces from the cable connection to the host and drive controllers ASIC, adds length to the bus.
Example: SATA drive installed with a 40 inch cable. PCB trace from Serial host connector to the serial hosts ASIC = 3 inches. The…
To upgrade the drive in your Macintosh computer, the first thing to consider is do you want to upgrade the internal drive or do you just want to add additional storage with an external drive?
Internal Drive vs. External Drive
An internal drive will generally provide much better performance on the computer and can be used to store programs and data. An external drive will be slower and suited for data only, however it provides portability and an easier installation.
Internal storage considerations
Internal drives come in several interfaces, Serial ATA (SATA), ATA/IDE (PATA), and SCSI.
Most newer Apple…
There are several items to consider when replacing a drive from a failed RAID. If you are building a new RAID, then all drives in the array should be the identical model if at all possible.
However, if you must replace a failed drive, it can sometimes be difficult to find the same model if that model is out of production. Below are some tips to follow when selecting a replacement.
Note: Keep in mind that the controller may or may not allow different models in a RAID, so check the RAID controller documentation.
1. Product life: What is…
1. ‘No ROM Basic’ Error
When a partition is not set to the bootable partition. This usually occurs when the drive at one time was a slave and now has moved into the primary position. Verify that the hard drive has an "Active/Primary" DOS partition. This can be accomplished with the DOS FDISK utility. Boot your system with DOS system diskette, type "FDISK/MBR" and press [Enter].
Note: All data could be lost when performing this command.
2. ‘Not Enough Drive Letters’ Error
After adding a new device such as a hard drive or CD-ROM drive the system reports an…
Partition Offset Information is a simple, single file Windows utility you can run to read and display the starting LBA for every partition. This tool detects disk drives that report themselves as large sector drives, typically 4KiB sectors, and analyzes the starting sector of a partition to see if the logical file system clusters are aligned to the disk drive or not. The Partition Offset Information utility was written in 2005 when Seagate Technology developed disk drives with 1KiB sectors. These drives were never released to standard distribution.
What is 4K Sector?
Large‐sector describes using a sector‐size of 4096…
How to check if a partition is aligned?
Seagate has created a simple Windows utility, Partition Offset Information, to read and display the starting LBA for every partition. This tool can analyze the starting sector of a partition if it is misaligned or not.
In the example below, drive C: is a generic drive (ST9160823AS) with 512 bytes per sector. Drives F:, G: and H: are logical drives, all on the ST32000540AS which has a 4096 byte (4KiB) sector size and an Alignment of 0.
If the alignment on the ST32000540AS was 1, instead of…
It really depends if the motherboard on the system supports the transfer rate of the hard drive. For example, if the motherboard on the system only supports ATA 66 and the hard drive is ATA 133 the drive will downgrade the transfer rate limiting the transfer rate to ATA 66. Adding an Ultra ATA 133 PCI Adapter card will increase the performance of the drive because the drive in not limited to ATA 66 and can now operate at a ATA 133 rate. However, if you have a drive that is ATA 33 and put it on an ATA…
There are two workarounds for this phenomenon:
- Only use one primary DOS partition.
- Using FDISK, follow the steps below when partitioning the drive:
- Create a primary DOS partition with the desired size.
- Reboot
- Create an extended DOS partition using 99% of the available space remaining instead of 100%
- Reboot
- Create as many logical DOS drives as required, but with a reboot between each logical drive created.
What is Windows Me?
Windows Me is a new consumer operating system for PCs, and it is intended to replace Windows 98 in the summer of 2000. This new operating system may also come pre-installed on retail PCs as well around the same time.
How is the Windows Me different from Windows 98?
Windows Me, from a software and customer perspective, is not very different from Windows 98. There are some minor differences in networking protocols and locations of certain features between the two operating systems. Newer multimedia enhancements, easier home networking, enhanced stability, and new Internet…
Is there support for a "rollback" feature that guarantees a working system in case of Windows Me failure?
There is a feature in Windows Me called "System Restore" – this feature allows Windows Me to revert to an earlier "known working" configuration of the Windows Me installation if the current configuration becomes corrupted and makes Windows Me unbootable or unusable. For further information on this feature and how it is used, please contact Microsoft.
Will Windows Me still run my older 16-bit applications and DOS applications?
Microsoft has stated that Windows Me will have complete compatibility for…
