Installing a new S-ATA HD under Windows XP Profess…

Installing a new S-ATA HD under Windows XP Professional – The DiskPart utility way

So you bought a new S-ATA Hard Disk and can’t wait to plug it in your machine and start using it?
Ok…You have physically connected the drive (power supply, s-ata cable etc) and opened Disk Management utility (Start -> Run -> diskmgmt.msc) just to see the new drive as unallocated…Tried to right click the disk and format it? My guess is that no format option existed…? Right?

If yes follow the steps below to see how a utility shipped with Windows 2000, Windows XP called DiskPart can save the day with a set of simple commands.

1. if you have closed Disk Management re-open it.

2. verify that the disk (i.e. disk 1) shows (as unallocated)

3. right click the disk to view available option.

4. format listed? if not then Start -> Run -> diskpart. DiskPart will help
us allocate partition(s) for the HD along with letter volumes and format accordingly.

5. inside Diskpart we will issue a set of commands marked below within “” (don’t include quotes when executing the command )

5.1 “list disks” (shows the available disks, i.e. disk 0, disk 1)

5.2 “select disk 1″ to move the focus to the new HD (an “*” appears to indicate that we have selected the disk)

5.3 “create partition primary”

Finished with our partition allocation!

From now on you can check Disk Management to see that changes by DiskPart session are immediately reflected and shown on the Disk Management window. You can now continue with the rest of the steps described below or switch to the right-click context menu of the Disk Management utility to choose drive letter for your partition volume and format the partition respectively.

5.4 “list partition” will show one and only (primary) partition created for the new HD

5.5 “list volume” will bring up a list of the drive volumes that exist on our PC.
Last in list appears a volume with no letter or label whatsoever. This is our HD’s partition created at step 5.3

5.6 “select volume [number]“,

5.7 “assign [letter]” [a letter not occupied by other drives/partitions].

5.8 Inside a DOS session (Start -> Run -> cmd) type: “format [letter assigned at 5.7] /FS:NTFS” to format the partition.

Hope you read through a previous blog on CD/DVD me…

Hope you read through a previous blog on CD/DVD media and ways to understand whether the discs you bought are actually worth burning or not.

In case you haven’t here is the link:

http://dvrazos.blogspot.com/2006/02/ever-encountered-errors-like-cyclic.html

In case you want more here is the link to a forum research thread (Greek only):

http://www.pctechnology.gr/vbull/vb/showthread.php?t=11310

To further drill down on the details here is an exhaustive list of cd/dvd media-discs along with their media id’s (PDF file):

http://cweb.msi.com.tw/html/products/optical_devices/recommend/8352/CD-R.pdf

it’s amazing…the way one moment of random PC sys…

it’s amazing…the way one moment of random PC system settings’ seeking can lead to an utterly enlightening experience of System tweaking (here and there) (did I just write that?)

anyway….it was when i began copying some files from a local-fixed HD to a USB 2.0 -External one when i realised that the copy process was pain-stakingly slooooooow…..Root of problem: DMA transfer mode.

Technical background: DMA (Direct Memory Access) transfer modes: PIO (programmed input-output) for old HD drives and Ultra ATA (UDMA) that start for Mode 2 (44 MBps) and result in Mode 6 (166 MBps) for newer driver. End of technical background.

The reason for the slow copy procedure was that the local-fixed drive controller (Secondary cable – IDE) had dropped it’s transfer mode to PIO from UDMA. This happens when Windows detects I/O timeouts (i think >6 timeouts drop the mode).

Solution that worked for me:

- reboot -> enter bios -> load optimized defaults.

Other solutions that may work for you:

- deactivate the Secondary Channel -> reboot -> let Windows reenstate it (and see what happens next).
- if BIOS doesn’t seem to support UDMA for the drive flash-upgrade it following the Motherboarb manual instructions carefully!
- if BIOS supports UDMA for the HD drive make sure that the motherboard driver is the one running in Windows environment instead of Windows native atapi.sys.

You will inevitably have to dig your way into Registry caveats but beware…

And another thing…if you run into video playback problems check DMA settings. Just thought it would help to mention it…

More useful info here:
http://winhlp.com/WxDMA.htm
http://www.pcbuyerbeware.co.uk/IDE.htm

Ever encountered errors like "Cyclic redundancy er…

Ever encountered errors like “Cyclic redundancy error check” while trying to access/copy one of your proudly recorded new cd/dvd…? Wondered what the h*ll happened since Nero showed no errors whatsoever at the end of the recording process…

From now on: DON’T trust “Disc was written successfully” message of Nero Burning ROM (or another burning program to that effect). Moreover, don’t fall for the trap of well-known makes and brands of optical media like TDK and so on since rarely do they produce their own discs, instead they outsource their production to China-Korea based factories…So, seeing a TDK disc doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a TDK product 100% (Brand VS Media ID)

End of (bitter) story…
Check the following links to (i hope they enlighten you, they sure worked for me):

News, updates regarding optical media industry as a whole:
http://www.cdrinfo.com/

Specific technical review – brand focused:
http://www.cdmediaworld.com/hardware/cdrom/cd_quality.shtml#CD-R%20Quality%20vs%20CD-R%20Compatibility

http://www.digitalfaq.com/media/dvdmedia.htm

Burn your CD/DVD’s, don’t get burned by losing precious data on discs you THOUGHT were written successfully!