Number 194 - July 1999
Upgrades That Make Sense:
Adding Drive Storage Space
by Ken Fermoyle
    (Author’s Note: This article was half complete when I began hearing reports of mysterious problems affecting some Ultra DMA (also called ATA, Fast ATA, EIDE or DMA/33) hard drives. The number of incidents was small, but not insignificant, so I felt I needed to investigate. See results in accompanying sidebar. If you have direct knowledge of any such problems, please e-mail me the details at kfermoyle@earthlink.net. I will report new information in future articles.)

    Women say: "You can’t he too thin, too rich, have too many silk blouses." A computer corollary might he that a system can’t he too fast, have too much RAM or too much hard disk capacity.

    One could argue the first premise in both cases. Being too thin might mean anorexia, which isn’t good, and a computer can have a faster, more expensive CPU (central processing unit) than its owner needs. There can be no argument, however, that you no longer need to be rich to afford lots of RAM or too much hard drive storage space. (I haven’t priced silk blouses lately.)

    The entry level for RAM now is 32MB and many new machines offer 64MB. Going to 128MB or more may be indicated for servers or some high-end tasks, but is probably overkill for most of us right now.

    Running out of storage space often is one of the first limitations you run into with an older computer, especially in these days of ever-bigger software programs. Fortunately, remedies today are easy, inexpensive and varied.

    Large-capacity Ultra DMA (Direct Memory Access) drives can replace, or be used in addition to, existing hard drives in many computers.

    SCSI (Small Computer Systems Interface) hard drives are expensive, very fast, come in many varieties. but require a special interface board.

    Removable-cartridge Zip and Jaz drives from Iomega can be mounted internally or externally (connected through a parallel port). High-capacity drive, such as the 120MB Super Drive, can replace traditional 3.5-inch floppy drives, CD-RW (rewriteable compact disk drives) are coming on the scene but are still pricey.

    All have good and bad points. Ultra DMA drives these days provide huge capacities, are inexpensive (as little as 5 to 10 cents per megabyte), generally easy to install and are as fast as some SCSI drives. They double disk read and write speeds of earlier DMA drives from 16.6MB per second to 33.3MB/sec. (Some UDMA drives that support 66.6MB/sec are coming, may be available by the time you read this; they require an 80-pin cable instead of the 40-pin cable standard for 33MB/sec drives. The two cables are pin-compatible, but the 80-pin version has added ground wires to reduce crosstalk.) UDMA also allows data transfers to take place with very little CPU involvement, which can mean better overall system performance.

    A very few UDMA drives have had problems (see sidebar) and buyers should be aware of a few cautions, but I believe they are the best current choices for mass storage in typical home or small office systems.

    SCSI drives come in a bewildering number of categories: Wide, Fast-Wide, Ultra Wide and the latest, Ultra 2 LVD (Low Voltage Differential). They need SCSI boards of varying types (and prices) to provide maximum performance. Frankly, I feel that SCSI drives are great for servers, serious game-players, multimedia or high-end graphics work and heavy-duty publishing or video editing, but not necessarily for most "grass-roots" users.

    They cost a lot: 50% to 100% or more than Ultra DMA drives of similar capacity. (One big computer chain store near me recently sold an 8.4GB Maxtor UDMA drive for $179, while a no-name Ultra Wide SCSI drive went for $299. Both were "bare drive only" prices so you would have to add the cost of a SCSI board unless you already had one.) And a SCSI drive may not be noticeably faster for the work most of us do most of the time.

    Removable cartridge drives appear to be losing ground. Syquest apparently went belly-up late last year and Iomega’s profits were down in 1998. Cartridges are not cheap and they are slower than UDMA drives. High-Capacity Floppy drives and media cost about the same but have the advantage of backward compatibility (i.e. they read and write to traditional 3.5-inch floppy diskettes). CD-R/DVD drives may be a better choice as prices drop, but let’s leave them for a future column when they have achieved a more mainstream status.

    How about the UDMA drive cautions mentioned above? First, read ads carefully. Drives advertised as "OEM" or "bare drive only," common practice for some large chain retailers (e.g. Fry’s Electronics), normally don’t include any cables, instructions, software (drivers and utilities) or mounting hardware. The latter come in full retail packages, which typically cost about $30-$40 more.
You can usually download drivers and utilities from the drive maker’s Website but unless you’re comfortable dealing with hardware and have some know-how, the retail package is your best bet. The instructions and installation utility alone can be invaluable. If installing hardware is scary for you, ask about having the drive installed or seek help from a knowledgeable User Group member. I have found that utilities such as Seagate’s DiscWizard make installation virtually painless IF you follow the directions!

    If you have a computer built in 1997 or before, its BIOS likely won’t support a UDMA drive larger than 8.4GB; most systems built after about mid-1998 include such support. OnTrack’s Disk Manager may correct this, but the easiest way to avoid problems with older computers is to go no larger than 8.4GB. Also, if you run a WinTel system without Windows 95 OSR2.x or Win98 with FAT32, you must divide the drive into partitions of no more than 2.1GB. PartitionMagic from PowerQuest is the best tool for this job.

    Not so incidentally, hard drive manufacturers have some of the best, most helpful Websites around. Go to:
Seagate, www.seagate.com;
Western Digital, www.wdc.com;
Maxtor, www.maxtor.com;
Quantum, quantum.com;
IBM, www.storage.ibm.com/hardsoft/diskdrdl.htm; or
Fujitsu, www.fujitsu.com/harddisk.html.

    Hope this helps you expand your computer horizons and gives you room to grow!


SIDEBAR

Problems Afflict Some UDMA Hard Drives

    I first learned of some UDMA drive problems in Win95/98/NT systems last November from Brian Livingston, Info World’s "Window Manager" columnist. He wrote:

    "There seems to be a discernible minority of UDMA drives that have been installed in systems that aren’t quite capable of supporting the maximum speeds UDMA can produce." He suggested that the problems could result from electromagnetic interference on the system bus, poor flow control in firmware or hardware, or poor drive circuitry.

    Upon investigation I discovered that difficulties ranged from failure to complete Plug and Play drive installation and slow-down/speed-up during file transfer, to extremely long shutdown times for Win98 and even failure of hard drive access!

    Moreover, it appears that not everyone who installs a UDMA hard drive is getting UDMA performance. Let’s take this situation first because it’s easy to check (1) whether your system supports UDMA, and (2) if it does whether DMA (Direct Memory Access) is enabled or not.

    (1) Click Start/Settings/Control Panel/System, then the Device Manager tab and plus sign at left of "Hard Disk Controllers." If you see an entry that includes "PCI Bus Master IDE Controller," your system supports UDMA. If an entry reads "Standard Dual IDE Controller," no bus mastering drivers are loaded and UDMA is not supported.

    (2) While still in Device Manager, click the plus sign at left of "Disk Drives," double click a hard drive icon (not a floppy or removable-cartridge drive), and then click the "Settings" tab. If you see a DMA box under "Options", and that box is checked, the computer is configured for UDMA drives.

    As for the other issues, I have two pieces of advice. First, a much more knowledgeable expert than I am, Mark Stapleton (aka Stockman), a mechanical engineer at Georgia Tech Research Institute, has studied the complex problems extensively. His take and that of Michelin’s "Tink" Long, an author-writer who does a lot of software tech support work, appear on Tink’s Website (www.csiway.com/~tink/techno-talk-computer-and-soft/and-sundry/dmawhite.lwp/odyframe.htm) in the form of a White Paper prepared by Stapleton. The paper covers the complex issues far better and more extensively than I could in the limited space available and I recommend it to you.

    Second, all drive makers are now aware of the situation and should have suggestions, if not solutions, should you have UDMA drive problems. Don’t hesitate to contact them. (See URLs in main article.) You might be lucky enough to get a tech support person like Bill Radix at Seagate, who helped me with a drive installation problem (caused by my error in misreading instructions) and was the best, most patient tech support guy I have encountered to date.

     Number 194 - July 1999