Computer Buying Guide

To format hard drive is fairly simple, you just need to bear a few things in mind. If the drive you are formatting is not the drive with Windows you can format from within Windows. Also make sure that when you format hard drive there is none of your information on that drive. If it does have Windows or your data you should refer to the article on reformat hard drive which will give a few more details that you should know. This is the process in Windows 2000.

Click on: Start >> Settings >> Control Panel >> Administrative Tools >> Computer Management >>Disk Management

Right click on the drive you want to make a partition on and select “Create Partition”. It will guide you through all the things you need to do to make a partition and format it.

Just create a primary partition.

Choose the maximum space if you want just one partition, less if you want to make another one later.

Choose a drive letter, or accept the default that the computer will give you.

Choose the file system. Windows needs NTFS, but you could also use FAT32. I would just go for NTFS, unless you have a reason for need a FAT32 drive, like maybe if you share data with a Linux installation on the computer.

Review the details.

Wait for a while as the computer goes through the process of formatting. (Could be a very long time on big drives)

Wait for it to finish, then all is done.

You now have a drive ready to use for anything to like. Not too hard to format a hard drive, right?

The power supply keeps things in your computer running smoothly. When they run well, you won’t even think about them, but when things go wrong, it can become very annoying.

The power supply doesn’t just run the power to the different parts of the computer. It needs to run different voltages to different parts, and besides that, it has to deliver them within a very tight range set out in the ATX standard.

Power supplies went through a phase of being extremely unreliable. This is because the actual parts are very cheap and standard and the profit margin in the power supply business is higher than almost any other computer part. The flooding of the market with poor quality power supplies led to lots of failures and complaints.

More recently, the problems in that sector have decreased, the general quality and build of power supplies has increased to a level where nearly any power supply will deliver what it claims it will and within specs. Most, but not all.

As with computer monitors, power supplies are one part that does not need to be upgraded very often. The only additions have come from SATA specific power plugs and the additional P4 plug in recent years and even those are not always necessary.

So what do you actually need from a power supply?

The most basic requirement is that its power output can match the power needed by the components inside your computer. Each part has its own requirement and its own maximums and minimums on what it needs. The claimed maximum power for each voltage are added together to give the power rating for the power supply.

The main power user in the computer is the CPU. Some Pentium 4 processors are known to gobble lots of power. Hard drives use some power too, but no more than 10W each, optical drives even less. The motherboard itself uses some too. The other major user of power are graphics cards.

As graphics cards have become more powerful, and with the advent of Graphical Processing Units (GPUs), which are like CPUs which are dedicated to graphics work, and situated on the graphics card, they can now use more power than a CPU. If you are running a very fast PCIe graphics card or a pair of them, you will need more power.

At the most basic a 300W power supply will be more than enough for most day to day use desktop computers, even if they have a small AGP graphics card. Only get more than 300W if you know you need it, or expect you will need it in the future after upgrades. 500W will more than suffice for even the most demanding system with 2 graphics cards, but it needs to be a reputable brand.

Enermax, Antec, Fortron and Seasonic are good names in the power supply business, you will not go wrong with their products. Even though there is a small price premium, the security in knowing that nothing will go wrong is worth it. Another power supply I like is the X-connect from Ultra. Each of the cables that come from the power supply are removable, so only the ones you are using need to be in the box. Very convenient and neat, as long as I don’t lose the cables.

Pre-assembled computers are known for having the cheapest power supplies in them. As no-one really checks the power supply when buying they just put the minimum inside. These are usually fine, but will often buckle under the load of extra upgrades you may make. Bear in mind that you might have to upgrade the power supply when installing those new, really cool graphics cards.

So, keep these things in mind…

• Stick to major brands
• 300W only unless particularly needed
• Functionality before looks

Leadtek’s line of TV tuner cards allow you to turn your desktop computer into a home entertainment system.

Including such features as Pic-in-Pic, hardware based MPEG-2 encoding, a remote control and automatic wake up to record, they are fully featured cards.

The latest drivers are available online from the Leadtek website:

Leadtek TV tuner XP 2000 driver

Leadtek TV tuner XP 2000 Expert driver

Many aspects of the personal computer have increased in leaps and bounds in terms of performance and what they are capable of doing.

Computer memory, often referred to as Random Access Memory (RAM), has become of greater and greater performance as time has gone on.

One of the famous quotes from back in the eighties was one made by Bill Gates when he said that no one would ever need more than 640KB of memory. Well that has been passed for ages now, with high performance machines sometimes sporting over 1GB of it.

There are many advantages that can be had with more memory.

• Programs run faster
• Less waiting time for programs to load
• More programs can be run at a time
• Overall computer speed is increased

Double Data Rate (DDR) memory is the staple of the consumer market. It has taken off due to public demand and now comes quite reasonably priced.

Computers don’t generally come with less than 256MB of memory nowadays. My computer after freshly installing Windows 2000 (no, I haven’t gone to Windows XP yet) takes about 80MB or memory. That is the very least, with no additional programs or anything else installed. After I have installed all the graphics drivers, Internet connection software for ADSL, virus protection and firewall it takes around 160MB of total memory.

From my previous experience, 256MB will do, but after it becomes quickly filled when running a few programs, Windows reverts to using the hard drive for memory. It’s a way to fake more memory, by using the hard drive as a temporary store. 512MB now does it for my needs, but if you run many programs or memory intensive ones, 768MB or even 1GB will do better.

But is memory size the only factor?

An equally important factor is the memory speed. It is measured in MHz. Most systems use 400MHz DDR memory. This would be the safe bet with almost any processor you may have. 400MHz has also become the most common to buy, there is not much slower than that left to buy.

Corsair XMS2 1024MB PC5400 DDR2 memory

Memory from a reputable manufacturer will ensure that you don’t have problems with it and will also provide a certain amount of overclocking if you are into that. Even better would be to get faster memory, it just runs down at the computers speed, even if it is designed for more.

Another aspect of memory has come into play, being highlighted mostly by the enthusiastic overclocking crowd, and that’s latency.

Memory is a bank or table of places where information can be stored. In order to get the specific rows and columns certain things have to be activated within the memory. In a nutshell latency refers to how long it takes to be able to acces another part of memory. The shorter the time it takes, the quicker it is.

Low latency memory comes at a huge price premium, with 512MB of top class memory costing more than some processors.

But does it actually benefit you?

If you are into high-speed 3D games then there could certainly be a difference. For the rest of us, there probably won’t be much difference. It’s still worth it however to keep latency in mind when shopping around. I would certainly choose a lower latency model when buying.

Dual channel memory is another recent addition to memory technology. What it does is it puts the memory into pairs, the two pairs together can increase on the performance and speed of the memory by up to 10%. The motherboard has to support it, and the memory has to be the dual channel kind. Dual channel will work even when not in a pair, but normal memory will have no advantage when put in a pair.

Finally, DDR2 is a newer addition available for Intel systems. It has 240 pins (the little copper strips at the end that plugs into the slot) as opposed to DDR memory’s 184 pins. In this respect the two are completely incompatable. DDR2 is by design meant to be in pairs, they don’t have to be, but they all have dual channel capability. Only Intel processors with LGA775 socket type use this memory, but it is much faster.

So, whenever looking for more memory, try to bear these factors in mind…

• Do you need DDR or DDR2 (LGA775 systems)
• What speed do I need? Usually 400MHz (named PC3200) or faster?
• 256MB minimum, preferably 512 or up to 1GB
• Dual channel pairs. Do you need them and does your computer support them?
• Latency, lower the better, but not essential. CAS of 3 is normal.

To create your Windows 2000 boot disk, you will need 4 high-density 1.44MB floppy disks. The Windows 2000 boot disk is spread over the four disks. Label them Disk 1 to Disk 4.

If you have the CD on hand:

Insert it into a CD-ROM drive.

Click start, then click run.

In the box type e:bootdiskmakeboot a: where e is the letter of your CD drive and a: is the floppy drive letter.

Follow the instructions on screen. You now have your Windows 2000 boot disk.

To use them, just insert disk 1 into the floppy drive and restart, or turn on your computer.

The Windows 98 boot disk will allow you to boot your computer up into DOS mode so that you can install Windows 98. The Windows 98 boot disk includes files that will let you format and partition your hard drive.

Note: The Windows 98 boot disk has an older version of fdisk so drives bigger than 64GB will have their size reported wrong. Download updated version at Microsoft.

Click Start

Point to Settings and click Control Panel

Click Add/Remove Programs

Click the Startup Disk tab

Click the Create Disk button. You will be prompted to insert a disk.

When finished, click OK to exit.

Note: If your machine does not have a floppy drive but allows booting from USB storage, you can also use an inexpensive external hard drive or flash drive rather than the floppies, which you can buy at the Dell.com Data Storage page.

You will need 6 blank floppy disks for creating the Windows XP boot disk. Make sure they are all blank first or that you don’t mind losing the data on them. Windows XP doesn’t really need the boot disks unless your computer does not allow booting from CD-ROM.

Download the appropriate file from the list below.

Windows XP Original release:
Home Edition: Windows XP boot disk
Professional Edition: Windows XP boot disk

Windows XP Service Pack 1 (SP1)
Home Edition: Windows XP boot disk
Professional Edition: Windows XP boot disk

Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2)
Home Edition: Windows XP boot disk
Professional Edition: Windows XP boot disk

Start the program by double clicking the file.

Accept the user agreement.

It will tell you that you need 6 floppy disks to create the windows XP boot disk.
The disks you put in will be erased so make sure there is nothing on them you want to save.
You will be prompted for the floppy drive letter (usually A:).

You will need to insert one of the disks now.
When ready press any key and the process will start.

Follow the directions for all six disks.

Booting from the disks

Just put the first disk into the floppy drive before turning on the computer and you will be prompted to insert each disk, one at a time.

Despite how many hard disk drives fail I’m surprised it’s so hard to find and exploded hard drive online.

Well my misfortune is to all of our benefit. Due to a head failure in my hard drive, hard disk data recovery was not possible.

Here is my hard drive, taken apart, piece by piece to provide a full exploded hard drive view for you to see.

The top of the hard drive as you can see when you purchase one (just missing the screws). Labels and screws basically.

This is the bottom. The board is the controller. The orange looking wires run to bottom of the spindle that the platters inside spin on.

No labels should be removed from a hard drive. They are used to make sure that nothing has been opened. Any warranty will be voided and you hard drive will be ruined.

The label tells you pretty much everything about the disk drive.

The Serial Number (S/N) is one of the easiest ways to identify a specific drive. As drives from a single manufacturer can be almost identical, this can help you tell them apart.

The box in the middle tells you most of the details, including interface (ATA/IDE or SATA), capacity, platter rotation speed (RPM) and other stuff.

Lets continue our look at our exploded hard drive.

The back of the hard drive has (for this drive) the place for the IDE plug, the jumpers for settings and the power plug.

The jumpers are used to pick from the different settings available. I have never used any setting besides the “master” and “slave” settings.

For your convenience diagrams are provided that show what the different jumper settings are.

Next, we’ll start taking apart our exploded hard drive.

My main obstacle in this procedure was the electronic screwdrivers. I managed to find slightly less sophisticated ways to get the outer six screws off.

IMG_1366.jpg

As you can see the final screw is in the middle, underneath the large label. You have to peal back the label (voiding the warranty). And to get my exploded hard drive, I needed to get it off in a normal manner.

Electronic screwdrivers only come in very small sizes. The end is shaped like a starfish, just with 6 legs. They are very small, and only a few larger sizes exist for other applications.

This is the pack I ended up getting. I cost around $8 for the set.

Next, we will look closer into our exploded hard drive.

Once all of those screws have been undone, the cover just lifts off. As you can probably imagine, it was quite hard to get good shots, with was was basically a mirror inside the exploded hard drive.

The orange colored stuff you see around the edge, and a little bit like a line with a kink in the middle is a sealant. Hard drives are completely clean inside. Due to how close the heads run to the disk, the smallest piece of dust can act like a grinder, literally cutting huge gouges into the disk. Gounges that are bad enough to render a disk unusable amy not even be visible to the naked eye.

This view of the inside shows a little closer. You can see the big disk platter on the left and the arm and head on the right.

The heads are located at the end of the arm. The arm itself moves with the help of a magnet, which is the big blob of metal at the left. The arm moves to find the right position on the platter, while the platter spins to get to the right position too.

Here you can see the arm in a position over the disk. The orange rectangle at the bottom right of the drive takes the wires needed to control the arm out of the inside and to the board on the outside of the drive. It has a rubber seal to keep things from getting contaminated inside.

This is the arm removed. The hanging bit goes out to the board. The gray wide part of the arm has a copper coil which you can see. That part sits inside the powerful magnets and is how the arm is controlled.

You can see the two inner metal plates, which are the two strong magnets.

I took out the platter and the arm to show you how they work together.

The arm, which really has two arms stretches out over the disk platter. At the very end, the two heads run extremely close to the surface to either read or write to the disk. One arm reads and writes to the top of the platter, the other to the bottom, making best use of what’s available.

This is another look at the arm by itself.

Well I hope you found something interesting from looking at my exploded hard drive. Besides the pain of losing all my data on that drive, taking it apart was really cool.

So don’t forget to backup your data. I wouldn’t like you to get into the same pickle as me.