How to troubleshoot a Hard Drive

For now there are two type of Hard drive used in computers. The Hard drive in your system may be an IDE or a SATA. IDE is the older variety, with the long, flat ribbon cable connector. SATA drives began appearing a couple of years ago. Gone is the flat ribbon cable. In its place is a thick serial cable.

Your hard drive have jumper on the rear. For the IDE HDD the jumper cap is used to indicate which drive is either the master, slave. You can also configure the IDE to use the ribbon cable as the basis for selecting which is master and which is slave this is call the cable select.

New hard disk installation

If you just bought a new hard drive and you want to install it first if its and IDE hard disk change the jumper cap to master, slave or cable select as you wish. Master is used when you have may be a CD-ROM drive and you are using one ribbon cable, slave is used when you have two IDE hard disk in one computer and you want the other hard disk to be master may be because you want to back up your files then you can put the jumper cap of the new hard disk on the slave pins. Cable select is use when you want the hard disk to be seen according to which part of the ribbon cable is connected to it. If it’s a SATA hard disk, don’t worry about setting the jumper just use its cable and connect it properly.

Old hard disk troubleshooting

Check your power cable
Sometimes a power cable is not properly connected. Make sure that the power cable you are using is good and change the current Molex power cable and use another one to power it

Configure the BIOS
You have to make sure that the hard disk is properly connected and the jumper cap is also properly placed, secondly check the BIOS. You will need to tap a certain key to enter the BIOS settings. This is normally the ESC, F1, F2, F10 or Delete key and is usually indicated on the very first screen when booting the PC. Once in the BIOS make sure the drive shows up in the appropriate place. If the hard disk is the master try detecting it and change the boot sequence to the master as the first boot device, and make sure it is set to Auto Detect the drive.

Check your IDE cable
Sometimes the IDE cable is not properly connected. Get another IDE cable and use it to connect the drives and make sure that it is properly connected.

Check if the drive is spinning
If the hard drive is not spinning, then it may not be getting power. You may need to listen real close to hear it spin, or touch the side with your finger to feel any vibration. If the drive is not spinning, test the power dongle with a multimeter, or try a different power connector. A power supply will often have several Molex connectors not being used. If the hard drive still does not spin up, the drive may be dead.
Sometimes may be something is just wrong with your computer that you can figure, so you have to try the hard disk in another computer before finalizing that its bad.

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How to Install A SATA Hard Drive

Installing a Serial ATA hard disk drive is generally easier than an IDE drive, as it is not necessary to configure jumpers. While physically installing the hard drive in the machine is similar, the SATA drives require fewer configurations and planning. The hard drive has jumpers at the rear of the drive, but they are used for power management and have nothing to do with Master, Slave and Cable Select like the IDE drives use.

Just like any hard drive, there are some precautions you must take when handling a new drive. Before doing anything, read the manufacturer's directions and follow any special instructions that might have been shipped with the HDD.

SATA HDD precautions

• Turn off and unplug the computer.
• Wear an anti-static wrist band or make sure you are properly grounded.
• Do not put stickers or labels on the drive.
• Do not touch the electronics on the hard drive.

Installation process

You can mount the SATA drive in the computer any way you want (flat, upright, and upside down) provided you use the screw mounts on the side or top of the drive. Mount the drive where you will have good air flow and be sure to use the SATA cable that ships with the drive or one that is less than 39 inches, which is within the SATA specification. You can connect the serial cable to a SATA controller on the motherboard, or a controller card if the motherboard does not have an on-board SATA controller.

Next, connect power to the drive using the SATA power connector or the legacy Molex connector. Do not use both at the same time, as this could hurt the hard drive.
SATA hard drive is better than IDE drives both in power consumption and speed. So when next you want to build new computer, consider installing a SATA drive.

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Step by step guide to map your network drive

The world has become a technology driven environment and computers need to be networked for effective sharing of files. Many homes now contain servers, wireless and more than one computer, In a home or office with more than one computer and wireless Sharing data between these computers becomes very important, so it becomes necessary to create a way to access and share files among these computers. One of the best ways to do this is to map your network drives. Mapping a network drive is a way of making that drive accessible from My computer and assigning a letter to the drive. If you have more than one computer that you will want to share files among themselves or from a server, having it mapped to a specific drive letter on all computers makes that data easily accessible.

To map a network drive in Windows, you first need to know the path to the drive you want to share. E.g. \\computername\drive name so if you want to share drive C: of a computer named MANAGER, the path would be \\office\ C: You can also do it by the computer's IP address if the IP is static. \\192.168.1.5\C:

Note: before mapping a drive on the MANAGER computer that the drive has been shared. To do so, right-click drive C: and select Sharing and Security. In the next Window, specify the share name you want to use on the network.

Once you know the path to the shared folder, you can begin mapping the drive in Windows. To start, right-click My Computer, then select Map Network Drive...You will see a place to indicate a drive letter and a place to designate the folder. You can "Browse" the network to locate the drive, if you can’t find it, you'll need to manually type in the path as we did above i.e. \\computername\drivename.

NOTE: 1. Try and keep the drive letter you assign the same on all machines.
2. Keep Reconnect at Login checked so the computer automatically reconnects to the share when you reboot the computer.

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