Western Digital AC2540 system manual Bios Sources, Should I partition my hard drive?

2.Some CMOS Setup utilities might have a boot sequence option. If yours does, verify that the boot sequence is A: then C:. Not all CMOS setup utilities have this option.

3.You correctly partitioned (via the operating system FDISK utility) and formatted (via the operating system FORMAT utility) your newly installed hard drive.

4.You made your primary drive bootable (formatted with /S option).

5.During the FDISK procedure you marked your bootable partition active.

Q: My drive will not spin up, or it spins down after a few seconds.

A:Ensure that:

1.Your power connector is secure and working properly.

2.The orientation of pin socket 1 on the 40-pin IDE cable matches pin 1 on the connector.

3.The drive type in your CMOS setup is correct.

Q:I don’t see the full capacity of my hard drive when installing DOS.

A:Two issues affect the installation of your hard drive: 1) some systems do not properly recognize hard drives that have more than 4095 cylinders (drives larger than 2.1 GB); 2) most system BIOS dated before 1994 don’t recognize drives greater than 528 MB. To overcome this limitation, either install EZ-Drive or upgrade your system BIOS. The following list provides the phone numbers for common BIOS sources.

BIOS Sources:
Micro Firmware
(Phoenix BIOS only)	(405) 321-8333
Phoenix	(617) 551-4000
Unicore	(508) 686-6468

If you installed EZ-Drive and then incorrectly booted to your DOS installation disks, you may have accidentally used DOS to overwrite your EZ-Drive partitions. You need to use FDISK to delete all partitions, and then re-install EZ-Drive. Be sure to follow the instructions outlined in the section Installing an Operating System from Disk on page 5

Q:The reported capacity of my hard drive is MUCH smaller than Table 1 shows it should be.

A:Your system BIOS improperly handles hard drives that report greater than 1024 cylinders. Use the supplied installation software to get the full capacity of your drive.

Q: How much memory does EZ-Drive use?

A:5 KB.

Q: How can I get 32-bit disk access in Windows?

A:Use the 32-bit disk access driver included on the software installation disk. Install the driver by running the EZ-Drive’s SETUP.EXE program, or use the DMCFIG program if you have Ontrack Disk Manager.

79-850078-001 S0210 9-97 8

Q:I am installing a new Western Digital drive onto a second IDE controller card (secondary port). How do I jumper it?

A:Refer to the standard jumper options shown in Figure 1. If it’s the only drive on the cable, jumper it as single. If the drive is paired with another IDE device, jumper it as master or slave.

Q: Should I partition my hard drive?

Caution: Repartitioning an existing drive destroys all the data. If repartitioning an existing drive, be sure to create a backup first.

If your hard drive is 2.5 GB or larger, you must create multiple partitions.

Western Digital does not have a recommendation for the optimal number of partitions. The following information will help you make the decision.

EZ-Drive and FDISK utilities allow you to divide your drive into multiple partitions that function as separate drives.

In DOS, every file that is stored gets at least one allocation unit (cluster), regardless of the file size. The size of the cluster increases with the size of the partition. For example, if you have a 1024 MB partition, the cluster size is 32 KB. This means that even a 62-byte batch file consumes 32 KB of storage space. A typical mix of application and data files can include thousands of files. If each file contains a few kilobytes of wasted space, this can add up to several megabytes of wasted space.

The only way to reduce the cluster size is to reduce the partition size. The breakdown for DOS 5.0 and above follows:

FDISK Partition Size*		Cluster Size
0 - 127 MB		2 KB
128	- 255 MB	4 KB
256	- 511 MB	8 KB
512 - 1023 MB		16 KB
1024	- 2047 MB	32 KB

*FDISK reports binary megabytes (1,048,576 bytes), not decimal megabytes (1,000,000 bytes). All numbers above are shown in binary megabytes.

Note: The maximum partition that can be created in DOS is 2048 MB.

Q: Will my drive work with Windows 95?

A:Yes. Your drive has been thoroughly tested in the Western Digital FIT Lab and is compatible with Windows 95.

Q: I have a 2.5 GB or larger drive. Can I create one partition only?

A:No. DOS has a 2.1 GB partition limitation. You must have at least two partitions to access the full capacity of your drive.

Q:What will happen if I install EZ-Drive on a hard drive that has Ontrack Disk Manager?

A:EZ-Drive and Ontrack Disk Manager cannot coexist in the same system. If the existing hard drive has only one partition and Ontrack Disk Manager already installed, EZ-Drive converts the Ontrack Disk Manager partition to an EZ-Drive partition. Back up your hard drive before installing EZ-Drive.If the existing hard drive has multiple partitions and Ontrack Disk Manager installed, EZ-Drive will not install. Use Ontrack Disk Manager to set up the new hard drive.