Back up your hard disk before your attempt to do anything to your hard disk.  As a minimum copy the important personal files and documents to a floppy disk. Also make a boot disk with the essential files and make sure the boot disk is working.

• Is all hard disks same
• What to look in a good hard disk
• What is SCSI hard disk, Are they better than normal or IDE Hard disks
• What is UDMA or Ultra DMA and ATA66 Hard disk
• Handling hard disk
  How to install a new hard disk
• How to partition a new hard disk
• How to format a hard disk
• How to know whether my hard disk is dead
• How to copy the files if backup system does not work
• How to erase all data in the hard disk
• How to format the hard disk
• What is fat32  for hard disks
• Why your hard disk is smaller than what you have paid for

• Is all hard disks same

Not all hard disks are the same. They can differ on reliability, speed of data transfer and the warranty terms The industry standard to measure reliability is the MTBF value (stands for Mean Time Between Failure ) The data transfer rate is a factor determined by the spindle speed and the other internal characteristics like cache memory on the hard disk..

• What to look in a good hard disk
  Good hard disks have better reliability (High MTBF value), high data transfer speeds and better warranty terms But most important of all the backup behind the product (I mean the dealer)  Is the dealer happy to replace your hard disk if it has one or two bad sectors or does it has to be dead to get a replacement.
• What is SCSI hard disk, Are they better than normal or IDE
  SCSI hard disks are used mainly in the business environments (Mainly in file servers).   They are fast but they cost much more than the normal IDE drives.  For the average user it is better spend money to get a faster processor than a SCSI drive. (I mean if you can get a Pentium 300 with a SCSI drive then you can get a Pentium 350 with an IDE drive be a better value)
• What is UDMA or Ultra DMA
  UDMA is the new standard in data transfer between the computer and your hard disk. That is supersede to double your hard disk data transfer speed compared with the old Mode 4. In actual practice you may seed about 20% improvement in speed which gives rise to about 10% overall computer performance.  ATA 66 or UDMA 66 is a new standard which improve data transfer rate up to 66MB/s.  To enable that you need an ATA 66 capable hard disk, ATA 66 capable Motherboard with relevant chipsets, special ATA 66 cable and ATA66 supporting drivers at the operating system.

• Handling hard disk
  Hard disks has to be handled careful. They come in an anti-static bag and keep the bag in safe place in case you need to return the hard disk. 
  ** DO NOT TOUCH THE ELECTRONIC CIRCUITS UNDER THE HARD DISK.
  **  DO NOT LET  THE ELECTRONIC CIRCUITS UNDER THE HARD DISK GET IN CONTACT WITH ANY OTHER SURFACE.
  ** DO NOT DROP OR PLACE THE HARD DISK IN AN UNSTABLE PLACE WHERE IT CAN DROP
  ** USE SCREWS OF CORRECT LENGTH. (TWO LONG SCREWS CAN DAMAGE THE HARD DISK)
  ** MOUNT THE DRIVE WITH 4 SCREWS (AT LEAST 1 SCREW ON EACH SIDE)
  
• How to install a new hard disk
  Mount the hard disk in a secure place. Make sure you have an IDE cable and power lead from the computer power supply.  If you are going to install it as the sole IDE device on the cable then set the hard disk as the single master drive which may be the default   settings. If you have to share the same cable with another hard disk, CD ROM or any other IDE device make sure one device is set as the master and the other as the slave.   Instructions on this settings  may be stamped on the top of the drive or available in a manual provided. Remember some drives (ex. Western digital) has different settings for 'sole master' and 'mater with slave' configuration .  If it is the main hard disk you are installing it has to be set as the master and has to be connected to the primary IDE port on the motherboard or the hard disk controller. Once the settings are set correctly you can attach the IDE cable which is the flat ribbon type cable.  Make sure the red marked side of the cable is close to the power connector of the hard disk.   Similarly connect the other end of the cable to the controller on the motherboard or the controller card making sure red mark on the cable matches with mark 1 on the controller. Connect the end of the cable to the master disk and the middle to the slave disk and the other end to the motherboard or the controller. Now you can connect the power cable making sure the colour pattern of the power connector is same as the the other connectors coming from the power supply. (Sometimes the wiring on the power connector can be mistakenly swapped around which can be fatal to the hard disk). If you have another IDE drive you may connect that also to the cable after configuration properly as discussed earlier (You need a cable with 3 connectors for that).  Now after a short prayer you can power on the switch and when you see the message on the screen "hit <Del> to enter setup" you can hit the delete button and enter the SETUP screen.  Just to see whether everything went ok you can select the "Auto detect Hard disk" menu and see how BIOS recognise the hard disk. If all went ok it should be coming up on the screen and you can select ok. Remember if it comes with several options you have to select the option with LBA mode for DOS/Windows operating system.  In case of other operating systems you may select Normal mode or follow the operating system guide lines. If all goes well you have finished the job well and you can save the CMOS settings and exit the BIOS setup. Next time   on start you may get all sort of messages like 'I/O error", "Cannot boot from this disk'  In that case you need to either format the drive, partition or transfer the system files
  
• How to partition a new hard disk
  There is partitioning software already available with your operating system and it the best tools to use.  Use of other partitioning and partition management software like PartitionMagic® , Ghost®, System commanade® can sometimes cause conflicts and incompatibilities. The trouble with those incompatibilities is that, it will come up as some other error in some other program in 6 months time. By that time you have forgotten about the partitioning and will loose sleep over thinking what cause this problem.
  Use of the FDISK version which comes with your operating system is the best option.   Boot from a boot disk (Start up disk) of the version of the operating system you are going to install.  type FDISK at the A:> prompt and you will see a message similar to
  
  FDISK Options
      Choose one of the following:
    1:  Create DOS partition or Logical DOS drive
    2:  Set active partition
    3:  Delete partition or logical DOS drive
    4: Display partition information
    5: Change current fixed disk drive
  
    Enter choice [1]
  
  First select option 5 to see the list of hard disks available. This option will not be listed if you have only one hard disk. Make sure you select the correct hard disk to work on as the data on the hard disk is lost when a partition is lost or recreated.
  
  Then select option 4 to see the partition information on the selected hard disk. If there is no partition defined you can go ahead and create a partition.  If there is existing partition you have to decide whether you want to delete that or not.
  
  If option 4 shows partition information and you need to delete them select option 3.
  
  If every thing seems ok you can select option 1 to create a new partition. Remember there are several sub options under each menu which are self explanatory.
  
  One limitation of DOS and early Windows 95 release is that they can address only 2 giga bytes as a single partition. (Who thought you need more than 1 gig in 1995 ?). In that case you have to create one primary partition of 2 gig or less and extended partitions to cover the other space on the disk. If you are using later versions of Windows 95 or Windows 98 you will be prompted when starting the FDISK program asking whether you want to "Enable large disk support" . This is the much debated FAT32 which may conflict with some old diagnostic and disk repair tools especially Norton utilities.
  
  You need to reboot the computer to make the new partitions effective. Once rebooted format the drives as necessary and you will be up and running
  
• How to format a hard disk
  If you boot from a system disk you can type FORMAT  X:  where X is the hard disk drive letter you need to format. Make sure you select the correct hard disk to work on as the data on the hard disk is lost when reformatted. If you are in Windows 95/98  you can right click on the drive and select properties and select format. It may not allow to reformat the active drive when Windows 95/98 is installed on the same drive. In similar cases you can select Start -> Shutdown -> Restart in MS DOS Mode  and type  FORMAT  X:    as earlier.  If you need there are several command line options which are useful including
    FORMAT  X:  /S   - Transfer system files so that you can boot to the drive
    FORMAT  X:  /Q   - Quick format
    FORMAT  /?         - Help
• How to know whether my hard disk is dead
  Check whether all cables are connected properly.  See install new hard disk to get details if needed. If every thing seems ok but it is not recognised in "Auto detect hard disk"  there is a 50% chance that the hard disk is dead.  If it is possible connect to another computer to make sure it is not something wrong with the computer you are running.
• How to copy the files if backup system does not work
  This all comes to better structuring of the hard disks, folders (directories) and files. When you are saving files from different programs make sure make sure they are stored under a common folder designated for data  rather than storing under each applications folder. Also give them names where the first few letters indicate what the files is. That makes easy to recover the files in case the Windows crashes. 
  To copy the files start the computer in Command prompt mode (By pressing F8 in windows 95 or  Ctrl key in Windows 98 when the computer starts to boot).  You need to learn bit of cryptic DOS commands to copy the required files to floppy disks.
• How to erase all data in the hard disk
  To erase the data on the hard disk you can format the hard disk.  But there are some commercial programs like Norton unformat which can recover the data from formatted hard disks. So if you have information which should not be seen then you need to get some program which does zero fill the hard disk. Most hard disk manufacturer sites will have some programs which does that.
• What is fat32  for hard disks
  FAT 32 is a new hard disk partitioning system introduced with Windows 95B in 1996. This partitions are not compatible with most of the older applications, especially disk management software.  Also they are not recognised by other versions of Windows, DOS and Windows 95A, Windows NT and so on.  To use of not to use FAT32, you have to select (Y) to the question "Do you wish to enable large disk support ?" which comes up when you  run FDISK. FAT 32 uses smaller size clusters  (or blocks of harddisk) and hence can be efficient in storage space. On the other hand it can make the computer bit slow as it has to piece together large number of clusters to retrieve a single file.
• Why your hard disk is smaller than what you have paid for
  There are several reasons why your hard disk looks smaller than what you have paid for.   They are

1. Hard disk manufacturers say 1000k is  1Meg where as  Windows takes 1024k as 1 Meg. So you see your hard disk measured in Meg a bit smaller.
2. Your hard disk may be partitioned into several drives. For example all new systems we do, we partition as drive C: and D:  Add C: and D: and make sure it is there.   Also if you use several operating systems the partitions used for them may be invisible in Windows and vise versa
3. Your operating system may not recognise larger drive partitions.  Windows 95a version and old DOS versions can recognise only 2gig partitions. If you are using Windows 95 original release you have to partition the drive into several 2 gig partitions
4. Older motherboards will not recognise larger drives.  Motherboards which are pre 95 may not have what we refer to as LBA mode and will not recognise drives larger than about 500meg.  The next hurdle comes at 8gig. Motherboards which are pre 1998 may not recognise drives larger than 8gig.  There are software patches available at each drive manufacturer web site to avoid that problem.

Limitations of motherboards
There are several limitations due to the ability of motherboards.  Very old boards has a limit of 540 meg due to LBA mode not available. Then again there is a limit at 8gig which may be caused by the bios of the boards (May be if the motherboard is pre 1999) Then there is a  limitation again at 32 meg . Wait till you see the next limitation .... Some of these

Hard disk manufacturer sites

Quantum 

• Customer support site visit the rival http://www.maxtor.com/Maxtorhome.htm

Seagate

• harddisk information www.seagate.com
• Download Diskwizard software if your motherboard does not recognise the full size of the hard drive click

Western Digital

• Support site http://www.westerndigital.com/service/
• Western Digital download utilities and installation software http://www.westerndigital.com/service/ftp/drives.html

Fujitsu

• hard disk info  http://www.figitsumicro.com

Samsumg

• hard disk info http://www.samsung.com.au/hdd/hdd.html
  or http://www.samsungsupport.com/hddmenu.htm