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The reporting of installed optical-media drives in CMOS serves two purposes. First, it tells the technician that the ATAPI drive has good connectivity. Second, it shows that you have the option to boot to an optical disc, such as a Windows XP disc. What it doesn’t do, however, is provide true BIOS support for that drive. That has to come with a driver loaded at boot-up.

Figure 11-47 CMOS screen showing a CD-ROM drive detected

Troubleshooting Hard Drive Installation

The best friend a tech has when it comes to troubleshooting hard drive installation is the autodetection feature of the CMOS setup utility. When a drive doesn’t work, the biggest question, especially during installation, is “Did I plug it in correctly?” With autodetection, the answer is simple; if the system doesn’t see the drive, something is wrong with the hardware configuration. Either a device has physically failed or, more likely, you didn’t give the hard drive power, plugged a cable in backward, or messed up some other connectivity issue.

Getting a drive installed and recognized by the system takes four things: jumpers (PATA only), data cable, power, and the CMOS setup recognizing the drive. If you miss or mess up any of these steps, you have a drive that doesn’t exist according to the PC! To troubleshoot hard drives, simply work your way through each step to figure out what went wrong.

First, set the drive to master, slave, standalone, or cable select, depending on where you decide to install it. If a drive is alone on the cable, set it to master or standalone. With two drives, one must be master and the other slave. Alternatively, you can set both drives to cable select and use a cable-select cable.

Second, you must connect the data cable to both the drive and the controller, pin 1 to pin 1. Reversing the data cable at one end is remarkably easy to do, especially with the rounded cables. They obviously don’t have a big red stripe down the side to indicate the location of pin 1! If you can’t autodetect the drive, check the cabling.

Third, be sure to give the hard drive power. Most hard drives use a standard Molex connector. If you don’t hear the whirring of the drive, make certain you plugged in a Molex from the power supply rather than from another source such as an otherwise disconnected fan. You’d be surprised how often I’ve seen that.

Fourth, you need to provide BIOS for the controller and the drive. This can get tricky because the typical CMOS setup program has a lot of hard drive options. Plus, you have an added level of confusion with RAID settings and nonintegrated controllers that require software drivers.

Once you’ve checked the physical connections, run through these issues in CMOS. Is the controller enabled? Is the storage technology—LBA, INT13, ATA/ATAPI-6—properly set up? Similarly, can the motherboard support the type of drive you’re installing? If not, you have a couple of options. You can flash the BIOS with an upgraded BIOS from the manufacturer or you can get a hard drive controller that goes into an expansion slot.

Finally, with nonintegrated hard drive controllers such as those that come with many SATA drives, make certain that you’ve installed the proper drivers for the controller. Driver issues can crop up with new, very large drives and with changes in technology. Always check the manufacturer’s Web site for new drivers.

Beyond A+

Spindle (or Rotational) Speed

Hard drives run at a set spindle speed, measured in revolutions per minute (RPM). Older drives run at the long-standard speed of 3600 RPM, but new drives are hitting 15,000 RPM. The faster the spindle speed, the faster the controller can store and retrieve data. Here are the common speeds: 4500, 5400, 7200, and 10,000 RPM.

Faster drives mean better system performance, but they can also cause the computer to overheat. This is especially true in tight cases, such as minitowers, and in cases containing many drives. Two 4500-RPM drives might