Seagate 1270SL, 1080SL, 851SL, 540SL manual Configuring the computer

Medalist SL Family Installation Guide, November 1995 13

the computer. The computer returns an invalid drive specifi- cation error if you try to access the drive.

Caution. Do not write-protect the Seagate software diskette with EZ-Drive. The EZ-Drive program writes important in- formation back to the diskette during the installation.

Configuring the computer

Configuring the computer involves updating the computer’s Sys- tem Setup records with the new drive’s translation geometry (cylinder, head and sector information) and partitioning and for- matting the drive. The translation geometry is kept on the CMOS chip and is used by the BIOS to assign locations for the data on the drive. Many older BIOSs place limits on the translation geometry parameter values that do not allow it to assign data locations for more than 528 Mbytes when DOS is used. If your computer uses such a BIOS, it cannot access the full capacity of your new drive.

This section covers the following issues involved with configuring your computer:

∙How to determine whether your computer can access your new drive’s full capacity

∙Solutions you can use to surpass the 528-Mbyte barrier

∙Installing the drive using the EZ-Drive software

∙Installing the drive using the Standard setup

∙Replacing the Windows 32-bit disk access driver