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Most newer drives have indications on the drive for master/slave jumper settings. While there is no standardization,
MA frequently indicates master and SL indicates slave. There may also be two master options, master no slave and master
with slave. If you have only one drive, it must be master. If you have two drives, one must be designated master and the
other slave. If a drive is to be the primary drive in the system, it may not be necessary to change any jumpers. Many
new drives will automatically recognize they are master and also recognize whether a slave is present.
The master drive will report as drive C: and the slave will report as drive D:. Boot files must be located on drive C:.
After physical installation, the drive(s) must be set up in CMOS. CMOS is a small bit of volatile memory maintained
by the computer battery, where various hardware settings and other BIOS options.are retained.
The method for entering CMOS varies with different systems.Most commonly it is accessed by depressing the 'Delete' key
while memory is counting up. Your computer may display how to enter CMOS during the bootup process. Watch carefully, it
usually appears for only a second.
Find the selection in CMOS called "IDE Auto Detect" or "Hard Drive Auto Detect". These features should automatically
find your hard drive(s) and record the proper parameters. If your CMOS does not have an auto detect feature, it will be
necessary to set the drive(s) up manually. Enter "Standard CMOS Setup".and key in the values for heads, cylinders, and
tracks as printed on top of the drive(s). Once these parameters are detected or entered, CMOS should report the number
of available megabytes for the drive. This may be slightly less than the drive size due to various overhead
requirements. If hard drive parameters are set incorrectly, you may receive "Missing Operating System" or "HDD
Controller Failure" errors during booting.
Exit CMOS with the "Save" option.
Check documentation to see if your motherboard supports LBA mode. This allows recognition of hard drive sizes greater
than 528mb. If LBA mode is not supported, the system will only recognize a maximum 528mb, regardless of how large the
hard drive is.
Non-LBA systems require a driver to be loaded to overcome the 528mb barrier. Most large hard drives come with a driver
disk and instructions for loading it, or have the driver already installed on the drive. Driver procedures vary, but
generally the driver will load before DOS or Windows, enabling the system to see more than a 528mb drive.
Use extreme caution with these commands. They will destroy any
existing data on a hard drive. When installing a new hard drive with an existing hard drive, be sure you FDISK and
FORMAT the new drive, not the old one. If installing a new master drive, installation of DOS 6.0 or later versions will
automatically perform the below FDISK and FORMAT functions. If installing a new slave drive, follow the below procedures
for D drive.
The DOS FDISK program must be run to partition a new hard drive. The program is on disk #1 of DOS installation disks,
and may be run by booting from this floppy and typing FDISK. If installing a new secondary drive, the program should be
executed from the DOS directory of the master drive.
Select the drive you wish to FDISK. The lower number will be drive C and the higher number drive D.
If the drive already has a partition and you have two drives in the system, you may be on the wrong drive. If so, press
'5' to change drives. If the drive still appears to have a partition then it probably came with a pre-installed driver
for non-LBA systems. Check to be sure the partition is only a few megabytes. If so, copy the contents of the partition
onto a floppy (in case you need it later) and then delete the partition.
Press '1' to create a DOS partition or Logical DOS Drive. Then press '1' to create a Primary DOS partition. Use the
maximum size available.
After partitioning, the new drive must be formatted.
DRIVE C: - Boot from drive A using DOS disk #1. Type FORMAT C: /S <enter>. The /S transfers system files to
drive C and makes it bootable. Should drive C fail to boot after formatting, boot from drive A and type SYS C:
<enter>. This is an alternate procedure to transfer system files.
DRIVE D: - Boot from drive C, change to the DOS directory, and type FORMAT D: <enter>. (It is not necessary to
transfer system files to drive D.)
And if everything went OK, you should now have Liftoff!
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Installation]
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[Back to Hardware Help Index] This page last updated 04/06/03
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