THE SYSTEM DRIVES

The primary hard drive

Your Apricot computer is supplied with one internal or ‘primary’ hard drive (HDD) designated as the C: drive. Windows 95 will normally be installed on this drive.

Data is stored on the HDD in Directories and Subdirectories, now referred to in Windows 95 as ‘folders’. More details on directories and folders will be found in the Windows 95 guide, as will information on software utilities, such as one to compress the software into a smaller space (referred to later in this chapter), or one to defragment your files and make them quicker to access.

The HDD will have only one partition and this will have been made ‘active’ i.e. the bootable disk. Partitions are like dividing panels or false walls in a large office, they cut the area into smaller sections, each one then becomes almost independent.

A secondary hard drive

Computers can have two hard disk drives, designated as Master and Slave, and the Apricot system BIOS is capable of handling this.

Any slave drive will be supplied completely blank, but should be supplied with full instructions. Fitting and setting up a second hard drive is not difficult, but there can be many issues to be resolved, only one of which is drive type. There are these facts to consider ;

∙Handling and fixing the delicate module

∙Master to slave compatibility

∙Jumpers and links on the drives

∙Partitioning and formatting

∙Existing ribbon cable re-connection and/or extension

If you do not feel confident about installing a second hard drive you may wish to have your supplier or an authorised engineer complete this task for you.

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