OK, so you think you need a bigger hard drive. The kids have been installing games again, of course. It certainly isn’t your fault. No, the new golf game with 10 bonus courses surely can’t be the reason. So first let’s just talk you out of this right at the beginning. Have you uninstalled all the old stuff you don’t use? Searched the hard drive for all the downloads you’ve done and need no longer? Have you checked to see if the PC supplier put the entire Windows CD on the hard drive? Look in c:\windows\options (or any other location) for a lot of .cab files. Be careful here, make sure you have a Windows installation CD, then delete the files. It’s also common to have say an entire Internet Explorer 4 or 5 installation file – about 25MB. Once you install this, there’s no reason not to erase the file. Now go to your Internet Explorer properties, and locate "Temporary Internet files" on the General tab, then press Settings. Look at "Amount of disk space to use" and make sure this number is consistent with the size of your drive. You may need only say 20MB allocated to it. Click on OK, then on the previous panel press "Delete Files", OK to exit.. Then defrag the hard drive and see what remains. Consider if a removable media drive might not be appropriate here. If you’re storing a lot of music or video files you don’t need often, an Orb, ZIP, LS120 or a CD-R or CD-RW might be a much better idea if you don’t have a good backup system anyway. The ZIP and LS120 aren’t suitable for full system backups, but it’s good for the "important stuff". The Orb drive at 2.2GB gives you the best capacity for the dollar. It costs about the same as a 250MB ZIP. Media for it is only $30-$40. Check it out at http://www.castlewood.com. There’s a good article about removable media drives at http://www.pcworld.com .

Now here’s a really, really dumb question … do you have a hard drive in your system you’re not using? This is not really far-fetched, and here’s why. On many systems (Windows 95A and previous systems) there is a restriction on the size of a disk partition at 2.1GB. So if you bought a system with a 3.5GB hard drive, where did the other 1.4 Gigs go? Obviously, check to see if you have a D drive that’s not a CDROM. If that doesn’t yield anything, be sure to look at what the BIOS says about the hard drive on bootup and compare it to the capacity that Windows reports. If the BIOS doesn’t give the information, take the cover off the system box, dismount the drive and look at the label. Believe it or not, many drives don’t have the capacity marked on them unless they were manufactured within the last couple of years. Many web sites have all the documentation you need on this, though. Even for very old drives.

If there is some remainder that isn’t partitioned, it won’t show up as a drive. And you’ll have to use FDISK or Partition Magic to partition the remainder. Be careful now, partitioning a drive isn’t for most people. You’re putting the entire system at risk and should not do it at all if there isn’t a full system backup.

Don’t give up... here’s more. You may have a reason here to install Windows 98 if you have a drive larger than about 2.1GB. After you upgrade to Windows 98, do a convert to FAT32. The larger the partition you have the more savings there will be. FAT32 reduces the cluster size and can free up a considerable amount of wasted space. And the bonus is that you have Windows 98! Be very cautious if your system is a notebook. FAT32 cannot be installed on some notebooks, and the Drive Converter warns you of that fact.

One last thing. You may want to consider a disk compression driver. DriveSpace 3, that comes with the Win 95 Plus Disk, is the best. Do this only if you feel that you can stand a small slowdown of your hard drive response. Most people can. Disk compression works very well. It eliminates virtually all wasted space on the drive. It does not slow down program loading to any extent, and some claims have been made that it’s actually faster because less data has to be moved off the drive. Make sure you have plenty of memory for this. It’s definitely not for a marginal system. And it’s not compatible with FAT32.

Well, you’ve gotten this far, so I guess we have to go ahead and install a new drive. Most of what we’ll talk about applies to all three devices; Hard Drive, IDE CD-ROM and IDE removable media. – four I guess if you include IDE Tape drives. I’ll explain all the stuff that’s in common with these devices first: that is, how Pentium-class boards handle IDE devices. This also applies to 486 computers for the most part. We’ll assume here that we have a Pentium-class board with the IDE controller on the system board, or a 486 machine with the controller on an add-in card.

Here are some facts about IDE on a Pentium class board. There are two controllers, a primary and a secondary. Each has a connector (a socket) for a 40-pin ribbon cable on the motherboard. They are marked either IDE-0 and IDE-1, or IDE-1 and IDE-2. The first is the primary, the other is the secondary. You can connect two IDE devices on each ribbon cable, for a total of four devices. The two devices on a single cable are the "master" and the "slave". There are jumpers on the drives that must be changed to mark them as master or slave.

To summarize, the four devices are: Primary Master, Primary Slave, Secondary Master and Secondary Slave. If you have four drives in Windows 95/98, they will appear as drive letters in a different order. The more technical bits are at the end of this article.

We have to look at your system and make some decisions. First, it’s not a good idea to put a CD-ROM on the same controller (same physical cable) as a hard drive. Let’s say it should be avoided, but do it only if you have to. The reason is that the system can read and write to drives on separate cables simultaneously, but can read and write only to one device at a time on the same cable. So in situations where you have hard drive and CD-ROM operations at the same time on the same controller there will be a definite performance slowdown. If that operation is just installing software from a CD-ROM or doing a straight copy to disk, there shouldn’t be a perceptible difference. On the other hand, where there’s a lot of action going on, say in a fast game, it’s a no-no. I’ve seen plenty of business systems where there are just two IDE devices and they’re both on the same cable. But that’s just sloppy workmanship, or an attempt to save a dollar on the cable, and I correct that whenever I can. It’s where you get into three devices that you have to make the decisions. If one of the devices is an IDE tape, I don’t see there’s a problem because when you do tape stuff, you’re probably not interested in background performance anyway.

So, having made the decision on where this second hard drive should connect, ...let’s assume it’s the primary slave because the CD-ROM is secondary master..., you have to work out the physical problems. You should have a second connector on this cable (see cable notes below) and a place to physically mount it. Usually the rack where the primary drive is mounted is tall enough to accommodate a second drive. Also, is there a power connector available that will reach the location you’ve selected? If not, you can buy a ‘Y’ power cable that will extend an existing one to where you want it.

Now it’s time to buy a new drive. Surprised? You shouldn’t be. You need to work all this stuff out before you buy, right? Now look for a good deal with a rebate. Set a goal for a 6.4G drive for 100 bucks, and see how close you can come to this. If you’re reading this well after June 1999, it’ll still be a hundred bucks, but it’ll be an 8.4 or 10.4 or something else. Be sure that the warranty is for three years, and it’s a UDMA. It’s also called Ultra-DMA and sometimes UDMA-33. The newest drives are UDMA-66, and you have to have the correct support on the motherboard for this. You’ll need the same support for UDMA-33, and if your board doesn’t support this, buy it anyway. You’ll be upgrading your motherboard soon, won’t you?

Most of the drives are packaged in huge boxes, enough for 10 hard drives. These boxes will contain a floppy, some installation instructions and a cable. If you go to a store that builds its own computers, you can get "bulk" drives in just a plastic wrapper, sometimes for less (sometimes not). If it’s a "bulk" drive, try to negotiate a cable in the deal if you need one.

When you get home, if you’ve gotten the boxed type of drive, open it up, find the floppy disk that comes with it, and, if you have a Pentium system, throw the floppy away. Don’t even format it, just sail it across the room into the trash. (I’m pretty good at sailing floppies.) If you’ve got a 486 system and don’t have EIDE support, use it with caution. Better still, take the new drive back to the store and buy a new Pentium system; you won’t regret it for a moment. Life’s too short to use 486’s, old cars, old washing machines and not have any fun.

OK, you have the hard drive and you’ve figured out the physical problems. There are a few other things to figure out. First, is the new hard drive faster than the old? If so, or if you’d simply like to make the new one the primary drive because it’s really bigger, we need to manage that; and before you’ve mounted the drive is the best time to deal with it. There’s a separate reference below for this (see "Making the new drive the primary drive" below), and it’s especially complicated if your old drive is partitioned.

The next step after getting it physically in and hooked up is to make sure the motherboard recognizes it. So you’ll need to go into the BIOS and make a change. You do that by going into BIOS setup during the system POST, sometimes with the Delete key and sometimes with an F key. You’ll see the familiar Primary Master, Primary Slave … etc. The position you want will probably have a "disabled" on it. If you have a system not more than a few years old, it should have an Auto setting. Auto is my personal preference, because it requires less fiddling over time. Also sometimes you can just hit Enter and the bios will recognize the drive and make a "User" setting. That’s OK, and sometimes doing this will shave a few seconds off the boot up time. Exit and save the settings.

You’ll have to partition and format the new hard drive, easily done if you’re just adding a second drive. If partitioning and formatting a hard drive is not a familiar process to you, I recommend buying PowerQuest’s Partition Magic. It has a very good step-by step instruction manual. PowerQuest offers very attractive prices for user group members.

When all this is done, Windows 95/98 will boot up and all will be well, with lots of space to last you a long time. Check out the position of the CD-ROM, though, and adjust it if necessary. Happy Hard Drive!

CD-ROMS and removable media drives have the same basic issues as any other drive, with the added complexity of drivers. Remember that IDE CD-ROMS don’t need drivers for Windows 95/98. If you inadvertently install from the floppy, you’ll need to edit the config.sys and autoexec.bat files and remark out the CD-ROM drivers. It’s not really bad to have the DOS drivers around, in case you need to boot into DOS and do a Windows re-install in case of a hard drive catastrophe.

The primary controller is at port 1F0h, IRQ 14, and the secondary port is 170, IRQ 15. The ports and IRQs don’t seem to be negotiable. If, for instance, you had a network card and no secondary IDE device, the system may assign the network card to IRQ 15. But if you then added a secondary IDE device, the system would assign IRQ 15 to it every time, and the network card would be forced to go elsewhere.

Drives letters appear in a peculiar order. An active drive means the active (normally the first) partition. 1) Primary master active drive, 2) secondary master active drive, 3) primary slave active drive, 4) secondary slave active drive, 5) first primary master logical drive, 6) first secondary master logical drive... The problem that this presents is that if you have a partitioned drive c: and d:, and then install a second physical drive, that new drive will be inserted between your old c: and d:. So your old logical partition d: will appear as e:, because the new one will be d:. If the new drive is partitioned also, then the old one will have c: and e: and the new one will have d: and f:. Your CD-ROM will be pushed down the chain as well. This poses a particular problem if you have Windows programs installed to the old d:. They simply won’t work. If I were trapped with problems like these, I would be tempted to buy Windows 98, wiping out the partitions and all the software, use FDISK from Windows 98 and repartitioning so that each drive has one partition each. And, of course, reinstalling all the software. A lot of work, I know. A real advantage here though is that you won’t be carrying legacy problems with you. I hope you saved your old Windows 95 CD as proof of license to install Windows 98 upgrade.

The cables will mostly have three connectors on them, but not always. It’s very common for a CD-ROM to ship with a cable with two connectors, one for the motherboard socket and one for the CD-ROM, but no other. It can be replaced with the three-connector ribbon without any concern. The two drive connectors are closer to one end, with the longest part from the second connector to the motherboard, although it’s not uncommon for the wrong end to be used at the motherboard. In that case, just reverse it. There are various lengths of cables available at computer stores. They are even made in very, very long lengths.

If you’ve decided to make the new drive the primary drive, and the old one an auxiliary drive, you can copy the disks binary image from the old to the new, so that the new drive will boot right up with no fiddling with the operating system. I use PowerQuest’s DriveImage product. Install DriveImage on the old disk. Be sure to make a boot disk as instructed during the installation. Mount the new disk with the data cable and the power cables after setting the new drive as a slave. You should check the old drive to make sure that a jumper may (or may not) need changing when adding a slave drive. Boot the system with the boot disk you made. Read the instructions carefully, and copy, using the disk-to-disk function. Use the "Resize Partitions" button so that DriveImage makes a new partition using the full capacity of the drive if that’s your objective. When you’re done, shut the system down, get at the jumpers on the drives and reverse master and slave. It should boot now on the new. You can erase the software on the old, saving data files or documents if you wish.

Some drives and CD-ROMS have a jumper setting called "cable select". Sometimes it’s marked just "cs". We’re ignoring this setting, since it’s not used. Disks may have three settings; master with one drive; master with two drives, and slave. Other drives have only two: master and slave. CD-ROMS (all that I’ve seen anyway) have just two. Some are marked "cs", "ma" and "sl". Drives made in recent years have a label with the size of the drive and pictures of the jumper settings. Some have a small paper with the settings on them. If the label isn’t complete, I always make my own label with all the specs of the drive and stick it down on the top of the drive: cylinders, heads, sectors and capacity and all the jumper settings. Western digital prints all this stuff on the anti-static bag so you’ll be sure to throw it away. u