Hard Drive Types, Using Some Nuts & Bolts Diagnostic Tests

Hard Drive Types

If your system BIOS does not use auto detection, you must tell it what hard drive type you are using when you set up the system.

System BIOS provides you with a list of drive types to select from, as well as the option of specifying a user-defined drive type.

Unfortunately, this list is largely outdated because today’s hard drives are much larger than any on the BIOS drive list, so the user-defined drive type is the option used most often today.

The BIOS of almost every PC continues to offer the same list of “old” drive types, so it is still helpful to understand where the list comes from and what it means.

IBM established the first hard drive types, and a list of them was first included in its BIOS for the IBM XT 286 computers in 1985.

When a hard drive is installed on a microcomputer, setup is told the drive type, and this information is written to CMOS. The system BIOS then knows the logical layout and size of the hard drive.

As the kinds of hard drives increased, so did the list of drive types. IBM later added more types to its list, and Compaq and other manufacturers introduced their own lists. Other companies writing BIOS also introduced their own lists. At the bottom of the list of drive types, System BIOS offers the user the option to specify a user-defined hard drive type that can be used for larger drives. In most lists, this type is number 47 or 48. When you specify this type, you must tell setup the specifications of your drive, although some BIOS will auto detect the drive for you so that you don’t need to enter any information about the drive.

Using Some Nuts & Bolts Diagnostic Tests

Follow these directions to perform a series of diagnostic tests on your computer using Nuts & Bolts:

1. In Windows 9x, click the Start button, trace to Programs, trace to Nuts & Bolts, then trace to and click Discover Pro.

2. From the Discover Pro main screen, select the Diagnostics tab.

3. Although you can perform the five diagnostics tests listed from this screen, to have more control over the tests, click the Advanced button on the bottom of the screen.

4. Select the hard drive test by clicking on the HD Diag button on the left side of the screen.

5. Select the hard drive from the list of drives on the right side.

6. Click the Start button to perform the test.

7. Print the results of the test by clicking the Print button.

8. Perform and print the results of each of the remaining four diagnostic tests.