Computer Maintenance and Technical Support

Chapter Six
Storage Devices

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 Chapter Six
Storage Devices
 The Floppy Drive
 The Hard Drive
 The CD-ROM Drive
 Troubleshooting the Storage devices

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 Storage devices
Why storage media in a computer system?
• All information needs to be stored somewhere.

It’s a simple fact of life. At your office, you may have letters,
cos, and so on that need to be stored somewhere to make
them easily accessible and retrievable.
• With computers, you have various types of electronic
informant traction to store, including data files, application
files, and configuration files.
 Storage devices
Secondary Memory (Permanent storage hardware)
 are permanent storage areas.
• some of them are:
 Hard disk
 Can store huge date permanently
 floppy disk
 CD-ROM
 Flash disk and so on.
 Hard Disk Drive
• The computer stores information that is permanent, on the
Hard Disk platter
• The Hard Disk is sealed in the Hard Disk Drive.
• The disc is made from aluminium with coating of magnetic
material such as ferric oxide or chromium oxide.
• The Hard Disk Drive is very sensitive to shock and
electrostatic discharge.
• Data is stored on the surface of a platter in sectors and tracks
• Tracks are concentric circles, and sectors are pie-shaped
wedges on a track with magnetic marking and an ID number,
Sectors have a sector header and an error correction code
(ECC).

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 Sector

Track

department of CSED,Bahir Dar university 7

 How do u know the capacity of the hard disk?
Secondary Memory (Permanent storage hardware)

Hard
disk
 Basic Hard Disk Drive Components
 Disk platters- round, flat disks designed to store information in
the form of magnetic patterns.
 Read/write heads- reads/writes data
 Head actuator mechanism- moves the head across the disk
 Spindle motor (inside platter hub)- The motor that spins/rotates
the platters
 Logic board (controller or Printed Circuit Board)- controls the
activity of the other components and communicates
with the rest of the PC.
 Cables and connectors- Interface connectors , power connectors
 Configuration items (such as jumpers or switches)

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 Internal parts of hard disk
Secondary Memory (Permanent storage hardware)

Hard
disk
 Hard disk Installation
1. Turn off the computer, unplug the external cables, and open
computer cover. Mount the Hard Disc in the designated
place in the computer.
2. Connect 40 pin interface cable and power cable. Make sure
that the directions of the cables are correct and match the
shape of the receptacles when connecting cables. Incorrect
cable connection may damage the Hard Disk Drive.
3. Making Computer Detect the new Device.
Run the CMOS (BIOS) set-up program to detect the new Hard
Disk Drive.
4. Partitioning and formatting the Drive.
There are two types of formatting:
1. low- Level formatting (physical formatting)
2. high-Level formatting (logical formatting)
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 Low Level Formatting
• creates the tracks and sectors on a hard disk
• stays unchanged for the entire life of the drive unless the
drive is re-formatted
• done at the factory on all modern drives
High Level Formatting
• The operating system writes the file system structures
necessary for managing files and data on the disk.
• These data structures enable the operating system to manage
the space on the disk, keep track of files, and even manage
defective areas so they do not cause problems.

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 Partitioning
Partitioning is creating multiple volumes/logical drives on the drive
A volume or logical drive is any section of the disk to which the
operating system assigns a drive letter or name.
Partitioning is required because a hard disk is designed to be used
with more than one operating system or file system.
Every hard disk drive must have at least one partition on it and can
have up to four partitions, each of which can support the same or
different type file systems
Windows normally uses two types of partitions, called primary and
extended.
There can be up to four total partitions on a drive.
Only primary partitions can be marked active (bootable).
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 Hard disk drive interfaces
• A hard disk drive (often shortened as hard disk, hard drive, or
HDD) is a non-volatile storage device that stores digitally encoded
data on rapidly rotating rigid (i.e. hard) platters with magnetic
surfaces.
• The disk subsystem consists of a disk and a disk controller.
• Common disk interfaces today include:
 ATA/IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics ) connect hard disk
 EIDE (Enhanced IDE) to a modern PC
 SATA(serial ATA)
 SCSI (small computer system interface)
 AHCI(Advanced Host Controller Interface)

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 Troubleshooting Hard Disk Drives
A hard disk Problem can be caused by
 hard disk drive
 hard disk controller
 SCSI host adapter
 cabling
 power supply

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Some things to check to troubleshoot IDE/ATA
hard disk problems
• The CMOS configuration is incorrect:- This message
indicates that something In the BIOS’ Startup configuration
information stored in CMOS is not consistent with what the
POST or boot process is finding. Verify the CMOS
configuration of each hard disk drive installed in the system.
The information you need regarding the number of heads,
platters, etc., should be in the documentation of each drive.
• Hardware resource conflicts:- Messages reporting some
form of resource conflict are typically indicating an IRQ
(interrupt request) conflict. Use the Windows Device
Manager to verify that a resource conflict has not been
created for the hard disk drive controllers by the installation
of a new piece of hardware. 16
 The hard disk cable may be bad or not connected
properly:-A message along the lines of “No hard disk” indicates
that the hard disk is probably installed incorrectly. If the front
panel hard drive LED lights up and stays on constantly, the drive
data cable is not properly connected. This condition should cause a
POST error message indicating that no boot device is available.
Check both ends of the cable, at the device and on the
motherboard or adapter card. Also check the power supply
connectors.
 The hard drive may be defective It can and does happen.
Every disk drive makes some noise and users get accustomed to it.
However, the spindle motor or the drive bearings can wear out
and seize up.

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 Drive incompatibilities If two drives will not work with
each other in any configuration or combination as master and
slave, there is something wrong with the drives.
Try replacing one or both and retesting.
Some Common POST and system error messages for
hard disk problems:
 Hard disk configuration error:- Typically indicates an incorrect
CMOS configuration or a loose, missing, or incorrectly installed
data cable.
 Hard disk 0 failure:- Disk0 is the master drive on the primary
IDE/ATA channel. This message indicates an incorrect CMOS
configuration or a bad connection to the power supply.
 Hard disk controller failure :- Indicates power or data cable
connection problems. Check the data cable connection and the
power connectors on the drive and the hard disk controller.
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 Activity
• You've installed one IDE hard drive, and it is
working fine. You install a second IDE drive,
and neither drives works when you start the
system. What is the most likely cause for this
problem?
• What the use of partitioning a hard drive ?
List two advantages

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 Optical Disk Drives
• Optical disks are optic readable media, contrary to hard
disks, floppy disks and tapes, which are magnetic.
There are two most common types of optical disks:
1.CD (Compact Disc)
2.DVD (Digital Versatile Disc)
CD (Compact Disc)
CD can store 700BM of information. Data is stored only
on one side of the disc.
There are three basic types of CDs:

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1. CD-ROM (Compact Disc Read Only Memory) - This kind
of is read only i.e. you can’t write data to such CDs or
you can’t erase from them. Data is only accessed/read
from these CDs.
2. CD-R (Compact Disc Recordable) - It is also called WORM
(Write Once and Read Many). These CDs can be written
on once. But then after, you can’t rewrite on it or erase
data from it. After you first wrote data on such discs,
then only thing you can do to read data from them.
3. CD-RW (Compact Disc Read-Write) - They are also called
erasable optical discs. You can write data as many times
as you want on such CDs. You can also erase the content
of such CDs.

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 DVD
• DVD stands for Digital Versatile Disc. But
some people mistakenly call it Digital Video
Disc. It is a relatively new technology that is
introduced recently. It is similar to CD except
that it can store large amounts of data and it
has narrow tracks than CD. It can store 4 -
17GB of information.

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Troubleshooting Optical Drives
The most common causes of optical disk problems are scratches, dirt
and other contamination.

Failure Reading any Disc

• If your drive fails to read a disc, try the following
solutions:
■ Check for scratches on the disc data surface.
■ Check the drive for dust and dirt; use a cleaning disc.
■ Make sure the drive shows up as a working device in System
Properties.
■ Try a disc that you know works.
■ Restart the computer (the magic cure-all).
■ Remove the drive from Device Manager in Windows; allow the
system to redetect the drive.
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 CD-ROM is totally dead.
Possible causes:
• Bad DC voltage connector from power supply.
• Bad connections or faulty component in
power supply or blown fuse.
• Defective microcontroller.

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 Activity
• You have inserted windows XP installation
CD into the CD-ROM drive to perform clean
installation but If your computer is not
capable of booting from the CD drive, what
may be the possible causes for this problem?

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 The causes may be---------
 CMOS set up program If the CD-ROM drive is
not set as first boot device
 The CD or DVD for scratches , dirt or defective
 The functionality of CD or DVD drive

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