CompTIA A_ Certification All-In-One Exam Guide, Seventh Edition - Michael Meyers [171]
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NOTE Most of the high-speed ATA/66/100/133 cables support cable select—try one and see!
If you don’t see a label on the drive that tells you how to set the jumpers, you have several options. First, look for the drive maker’s Web site. Every drive manufacturer lists its drive jumper settings on the Web, although finding the information you want can take a while. Second, try phoning the hard drive maker directly. Unlike many other PC parts manufacturers, hard drive producers tend to stay in business for a long time and offer great technical support.
Hard drive cables have a colored stripe that corresponds to the number-one pin—called pin 1—on the connector. You need to make certain that pin 1 on the controller is on the same wire as pin 1 on the hard drive. Failing to plug in the drive properly will also prevent the PC from recognizing the drive. If you incorrectly set the master/slave jumpers or cable to the hard drives, you won’t break anything; it just won’t work.
Finally, you need to plug a Molex connector from the power supply into the drive. All modern PATA drives use a Molex connector.
Cabling SATA Drives
Installing SATA hard disk drives is even easier than installing PATA devices because there’s no master, slave, or cable select configuration to mess with. In fact, there are no jumper settings to worry about at all, as SATA supports only a single device per controller channel. Simply connect the power and plug in the controller cable as shown in Figure 11-42—the OS automatically detects the drive and it’s ready to go. The keying on SATA controller and power cables makes it impossible to install either incorrectly.
The biggest problem with SATA drives is that many motherboards come with four or more. Sure, the cabling is easy enough, but what do you do when it comes time to start the computer and the system is trying to find the right hard drive to boot up? That’s where CMOS comes into play.
Connecting Solid-state Drives
You install a solid-state drive as you would any PATA or SATA drive. Just as with earlier hard drive types, you either connect SSDs correctly and they work, or you connect them incorrectly and they don’t. If they fail, nine times out of ten they will need to be replaced.
Figure 11-42 Properly connected SATA cable
You’re most likely to run into solid-state drives today in portable computers. SSDs are expensive and offer a lot less storage capacity compared to traditional hard drives. Because they require a lot less electricity to run, on the other hand, they make a lot of sense in portable computers where battery life is the Holy Grail. You can often use solid-state drives to replace existing platter-based drives in laptops.
Keep in mind the following considerations before installing or replacing an existing HDD with an SSD:
Does the system currently use a PATA or SATA interface? You need to make sure your solid-state drive can connect properly.
Do you have the appropriate drivers and firmware for the SSD? This is especially important if you run Windows XP. Windows Vista, on the other hand, is likely to load most currently implemented SSD drivers. As always, check the manufacturer’s specifications before you do anything.
Do you have everything important backed up? Good! You are ready to turn the system off, unplug the battery, ground yourself, and join the wonderful world of solid state.
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NOTE Installing solid-state removable media such as USB thumb drives and flash memory cards (such as SD cards) is covered in Chapter 13, “Removable Media.”
SSDs address the many shortcomings of traditional HDDs. With solid-state technology, there are no moving metal parts, less energy is used,