Mike Meyers A+ Guide to Managing and Troubleshooting Pcs Instructor S Manual Chapter 10

Mike Meyers’ A+ Guide to Managing and Troubleshooting PCs Instructor’s Manual Chapter 10

Chapter 10

Implementing Hard Drives

Learning Objectives

In this lesson, you will learn to set up the hard drive for data retrieval. By the end of the lesson, you should be able to do the following:  Explain the partitions available in Windows

 Discuss the formatting options

 Partition and format hard drives

 Maintain and troubleshoot a hard drive

Pre-test

1. Why does a hard drive have to be partitioned?

2. How do you format a hard drive?

3. What tools come with the OS to allow you to maintain or troubleshoot a hard drive?

4. What is an active partition?

5. What are fragmented files and how do you optimize them?

Lecture Outline

Historical/Conceptual

I. Hard Drive Partitions

A. Partitions are electronic, logical divisions of a hard drive.

B. Hard drives have one or more partitions.

C. After partitioning, drives must be formatted.

D. With multiple partitions, a system can hold multiple OSs.

Essentials

E. The two kinds of partitions are basic disks and dynamic disks.

1. Basic disks

a) Partitioning creates a master boot record (MBR) and a partition table held on the boot sector.

b) The first cylinder of each partition also contains a boot sector called the volume boot sector that contains information such as where the OS boot files are located.

c) Primary partitions

(1) Primary partitions store the OS(s). You can have up to four primary partitions per drive with Windows 2000/XP. If you want to boot to a drive, you must have at least one primary partition. When you create a primary partition, the program automatically assigns it a drive letter, with the first primary partition becoming C:.

(2) A dual-boot or multiboot system has more than one OS installed. Different partitions hold different OSs and the user can boot to any of these OSs.

d) Active partition

(1) Marking a partition as active makes it capable of booting.

(2) Only one primary partition may be set to active at a time.

e) Extended partition

(1) Extended partitions are optional partitions that are not bootable. You may have up to four primary partitions and zero extended partitions or three primary partitions and one extended partition with Windows 2000/XP.

(2) When you create an extended partition, you must then perform a separate step of dividing it into logical drives, each of which is then assigned a drive letter.

2. Dynamic disks

a) New since Windows 2000

b) Partitions referred to as volumes

c) Enable use of RAID

(1) RAID 0, 1, 5 allowed on Windows Server 2000 and Server 2003

(2) RAID 0 allowed on desktop products (2000 Workstation, XP Pro, Vista)

(3) Support simple, spanned, striped (RAID 0), mirrored (RAID 1), and striped with parity (RAID 5)

d) Other partitions

(1) Hidden partition. Primary partition that is hidden from OS, often used for backup purposes.

(2) Swap partition. Only found on Linux and BSD systems. Similar to a page file, but instead is a dedicated partition.

F. When to partition

G. Partitioning the hard drive

1. The OS contains the program that partitions the hard drive, but different OSs use different programs.

a) Older OSs up to Windows Me used FDISK.

b) Windows NT 4.0 uses the more powerful graphical Disk Administrator tool.

c) Windows 2000 and XP use the Disk Management tool.

d) Linux has a variety of tools for partitioning including Linux FDISK (a command line tool that’s different than the Windows FDISK) and GParted.

II. Hard Drive Formatting

A. File systems in Windows

1. All OSs contain a built-in formatting utility called FORMAT.

2. Different versions of Windows support different file systems.

a) FAT, now called FAT16

b) FAT32

c) NTFS

b) One or more sectors make up a cluster or a file allocation unit, which is the smallest amount of space that a file can occupy. If a file is smaller than a single cluster, the rest

of the space is wasted, called slack. If a file is larger than a single cluster, the next part of the file is stored in the next available cluster. Typically, you will have some slack in the last cluster holding a file. A cluster can contain only one file.

B. FAT16

1. Sectors and clusters

a) Sectors store 512 bytes of data. If a file is smaller than a single cluster, the rest of the space is wasted.

b) 64 K locations can be addressed. 64 K × 512 resulted in 32 MB max drive size.

c) Clustering combines a set of contiguous sectors and treats them as a single unit in the FAT. These units are called file allocation units.

d) Still only 64 K locations can be addressed, but since multiple sectors could be in a cluster location, drive size could be up to 2 GB.

2. FAT16 in action. When the computer writes a new file to disk, it starts at the first available cluster and continues to the next available cluster. If you delete a file, the cluster status returns to available. An optimized file is stored in contiguous or adjacent clusters.

a) Fragmentation. Over time, especially if files are frequently revised, files will become fragmented. A fragmented file is not stored in contiguous or adjacent clusters. The more fragmented the drive, the less efficient it becomes. Fragmented file takes longer for the heads to access.

b) Defragmentation. Disk Defragmenter rearranges files back into contiguous chunks and improves performance.

3. FAT32

a) Introduced with Windows 95 OSR2, FAT32 is an improved file system. It supports partitions up to 2 terabytes in size. Since it uses 32 bits to describe each cluster, cluster sizes are reduced, making the drive less wasteful. It is the file system of choice for Windows 98. Still, FAT32 drives may become fragmented, so you should use the defragmentation program. (Warning: Be careful about using an old FAT16 defragmentation program on a FAT32 drive. The results are not predictable.)

IT Technician

4. NTFS

a) Has gone through many versions. Current version referred to as NT version 5.

b) Although Windows 2000 and XP can work with FAT16 and FAT32, NTFS is the preferred file system, since it is very robust and secure. NTFS offers six major benefits over FAT16 or FAT32.

c) NTFS Structure. It uses a master file table (MFT) instead of a FAT. It keeps a backup copy of the MFT near the middle of the disk where it is less likely to be wiped out.

Discussion Point

NTFS Windows NT will support only NTFS and cannot support any FAT systems. This being said, you cannot take a drive that is running Windows NT and install Windows 98 or an earlier version. If you have such a drive onto which you wish to install Windows 98, you must completely reformat the drive to FAT32 or lower. Because Windows 2000 supports NTFS, you can install Windows 2000 over a Windows NT system without reformatting. Windows 2000 can also use FAT16 and FAT32 partitions.

d) Security. It views individual files and folders as objects and provides security for those objects through an Access Control List (ACL).

Discussion Point

When looking at the properties of a folder, you can easily tell that it is from a NTFS drive if you see a Security tab. e) Compression. It allows you to compress individual files and folders to save space on the hard drive.

f) Encrypting file system. Allows files to be encrypted and unreadable to anyone that doesn’t have the key to unlock the file.

g) Disk quotas. Enables administrators to set limits on drive space usage for users.

h) Cluster sizes. Cluster sizes can be adjusted if needed. NTFS supports partitions up to 2 TB. By adjusting cluster sizes, hard drives can support up to 2 EB.

III. The Partitioning and Formatting Process

A. Bootable disks. Any removable media that has a bootable OS is called a boot device or boot disk. System boots off the boot device and then loads an OS.

B. Partitioning and formatting with the Windows Installation CD

Discussion Point

On the fly formatting Most OSs today format the drive “on the fly.” This means they format the drive partition when you install the OS. However, not all do this, and you still need to format other partitions if present.

1. Single partition. One primary partition is the most common way to set up a hard drive. Basically creates one big primary partition that is assigned Drive letter C: and set to active.

2. Text mode of Windows installation has tools to create partitions.

a) Can create single or multiple partitions

b) Can set size of partitions

c) Can format partitions. Quick formatting does not check drive quality. Regular formatting will try to write and then read from each sector. Bad sectors will be marked.

C. Partitions and Drive Letters

1. Drive letters are assigned in the following order for PATA drives:

a) Primary partition of the primary master drive

b) Primary partition of the primary slave drive

c) Primary partition of the secondary master drive

d) Primary partition of the second slave drive

e) All logical drives in the extended partition of the primary master drive

f) All logical drives in the extended partition of the primary slave drive

g) All logical drives in the extended partition of the secondary master drive

h) All logical drives in the extended partition of the secondary slave drive

2. For SATA drives, drive letter assignment is similar but based on CMOS settings.

a) Primary partition of the first drive

b) Primary partition of the second drive

c) Primary partition of the third drive

d) Primary partition of any other SATA drives

e) All logical drives in the extended partition of the first drive

f) All logical drives in the extended partition of the second drive

g) All logical drives in the extended partition of the third drive

h) All logical drives in the extended partition of any other drives

D. Disk Management

1. Part of computer management

2. Microsoft Management Console (MMC) snap-in can be accessed directly with diskmgmt.msc.

3. Disk initialization. Includes special information placed on hard drive that identifies the hard drive and membership in different types of arrays.

4. Can create partition by right clicking on unallocated space and selecting New Partition. This will launch the New Partition wizard.

5. Formatting

a) If less than 4 GB can choose FAT, FAT32, or NTFS

b) If 4 GB to 32 GB can choose FAT32 or NTFS

c) If > 32 GB can choose only NTFS. While FAT32 supports partitions up to 2 TB, Microsoft supports FAT32 partitions only up to 32 GB. Effectively they are guiding users toward using NTFS, which overall is a smart choice for the extra capabilities.

E. Dynamic disks

1. Windows 2000 and newer OSs use the Disk Management tool to offer an improved kind of disk partition called a dynamic disk. Regular drives are now called basic disks. A dynamic disk, unique to Windows 2000 and newer OSs, lets you enlarge partitions without first deleting the partitions or losing data—something previously impossible without specialized third-party utilities.

2. Basic disks may be converted to dynamic disks and vice versa, but you will lose everything on the disk if you convert it back to a basic disk.

3. Dynamic disks do not contain primary and extended partitions. Instead they are divided into volumes. Dynamic disks support several types of volumes:

a) Simple volume: Acts just like a primary partition.

b) Spanned volume: Extends the space of a partition onto unallocated space on the same physical drive.

c) Extended volume: Spans a volume across multiple physical disks.

c) Striped volume: Two or more dynamic disks that spread out blocks of each file across multiple disks. All the disks make up a striped set.

d) Mirrored volume: Uses two drives to write data simultaneously to both drives.

e) Striped volume with parity: Also known as a RAID 5 volume, it requires at least three hard drives. As its name implies, it stripes the data across the volumes and adds parity bits for fault-tolerance.

4. The drive containing the system partition, typically drive C:, has some restrictions. Although you can make it dynamic, you cannot extend or span it.

F. Mount point. A mount point is a drive that functions like a folder mounted into another drive. This feature is limited to dynamic disks. Instead of assigning a drive letter, a mount point creates a folder for the drive and places it within another drive.

G. Formatting a partition. Can be done in Windows Explorer or Computer Management.

IV. Maintaining and Troubleshooting Hard Drives

A. Hard drive maintenance may be broken down into two distinct functions: checking the disk occasionally for failed clusters, and keeping data organized on the drive so that it can be accessed quickly.

1. ScanDisk and CHKDSK. Checks the drive for bad clusters, invalid filenames or folders. You can set it to perform either Standard or Thorough testing. With Thorough testing, it will look for potential errors on the disk and correct them or move the data before it becomes endangered.

2. Launched via Error-checking tool available in Windows Explorer properties. In Windows Explorer, right-click the drive and select Properties. Select the Tools tab end launch.

2. Defragmentation. You should defragment your drive as part of a regular maintenance program. Although this program takes a long time, degfragmenting can decrease your drive access time.

B. Disk Cleanup helps you remove four kinds of unneeded files from your hard drive:

1. Files in the Recycle Bin

2. Temporary Internet files

3. Downloaded program files

4. Temporary files

C. Troubleshooting

1. Hard drive failures generally fall into three categories:

a) Installation errors usually involve something that went wrong during the four-step installation procedure.

(1) Check for connectivity problems such as an incorrectly set master/slave jumper, a cable plugged in backward, or failure to plug in the Molex power connector.

(2) Incorrect CMOS configuration. If the CMOS loses its settings you may see one of these errors: CMOS configuration mismatch, no boot device available, Drive not found, and/or Missing OS.

(3) Partitioning problems could include forgetting to partition or using the wrong size or type of partitions.

(4) Formatting. Failing to format the drive will result in the driving not being accessible from the C:\ prompt.

(5) Go through a mental reinstall to see if you omitted a crucial step.

b) Data corruption errors occur as a result of power surges, accidental shutdowns, viruses, and other problems.

(1) The best first step is to run Error Checking utility. If a crucial file is missing or corrupted, you can use Extract/Expand to pull the necessary file from the CAB (compressed cabinet) file on the installation disk.

(2) If you have a bad boot sector, your system may lock up on booting or display errors like “Invalid partition.” The first step is to run an antivirus program.

(3) If there is no virus and you created a backup of the boot sector with Ultimate Boot Disk or a similar program, you can reinstall the MBR. If you do not have a backup and your MBR is missing or corrupted, you can try the command FDISK /MBR to reinstall the master boot record.

(4) You may also have corrupted data on bad sectors. Most drives have built-in error correction code (ECC) that will mark a sector as bad if necessary. The best utility for dealing with data in bad sectors is SpinRite from Gibson Research.

c) Dying hard drives may be caused by physical damage to the drive itself, with the drive either continuing to work properly or just disappearing.

(1) If you hear a high-pitched squeal, a series or clacks, or a grinding noise, you should back up your data quickly before your turn the computer off. It may not boot again. After you have prepared the backup, you can then replace the drive and restore the data.

(2) If the drive disappears, see if autodetect can find it. If not, shut off the system, remove the ribbon cable, but leave the power cable connected. Restart the system and see if the drive spins up. If so, it is getting power and is probably

good. If it doesn’t spin up, recheck the jumpers and ribbon cable. If this doesn’t solve the problem, there’s likely a problem with the onboard electronics and the drive is probably dead.

V. Beyond A+

A. Third-party partitioning tools. You can choose a third-party partition tool such as Symantec’s Partition Magic, VCOM’s Partition Commander, or the open-source Linux tool GParted.