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This chapter contains the specifications required when setting up a hard drive. It is alphabetically sorted by manufacturer. It contains the actual physical specifications and the IDE manufacturers' recommended logical parameters.
Several companies have changed names or have been bought out by other companies. If you can't find the model you are looking for, look through the other manufacturers to see if it is under another brand name. The model numbers usually stay unchanged when the drive changes to another manufacturer. The following is a list of some brand names to cross reference when looking for a drive model:
There may be others not listed here, so look thoroughly through all brands to locate your drive.
The following list defines the abbreviations used in the table headings that follow.
| INT: | Interface type. |
| CAP: | Capacity in MB (1MB = 1 million bytes). |
| FF: | Form Factor denotes the diameter of the drive platter(s) in inches. |
| HGT: | The drive's height. |
| CODE: | Encoding scheme. |
| LZ: | Landing zone (or parking, shipping) cylinder. Not used on most of the newer drives. |
| WP: | Write Precompensation cylinder. Not used on most of the newer drives. |
| RWC: | Reduced Write Current cylinder. Not used on most of the newer drives. |
| MTBF: | Mean Time Between Failures, in thousands of hours. |
| PHDS: | Number of physical data heads. Servo heads are not included in this figure. |
| PCYL: | Number of physical user-accessible cylinders. If the drive is an IDE drive and this number exceeds 1,024, a translation must be used. |
| PSPT: | Number of physical sectors per track. LHDS: Number of logical data heads. Servo heads are not included in this figure. |
| LCYL: | Number of logical user-accessible cylinders. |
| LSPT: | Number of logical sectors per track. |
In addition, the following abbreviations are used to save space within the table rows:
| INT: | COMM = COMMODORE |
| IDE-CPQ = IDE-COMPAQ | |
| U-SCSI = ULTRA-SCSI | |
| PCM = PCMCIA | |
| U = UNIDEN | |
| FF: | FH = Full Height |
| HH = Half Height | |
| 3H = 1/3 of Full Height | |
| 4H = 1/4 of Full Height | |
| 5H = 1/5 of Full Height | |
| CODE: | RLL 1 = RLL 1,7 |
| RLL 2 = RLL 2,7 | |
| RLL 3 = RLL 3,9 | |
| PSPT: | VAR = Variable sectors per track. |
Older BIOSes can only access 1,024 cylinders, and most IDE drives now use more. If this is the case, an IDE drive's physical parameters cannot be used to achieve a safe setup with full capacity. Most IDE drives manufactured after 1990 support a logical translation to alleviate this problem. Please see "The IDE Interface" in Chapter Three for a more detailed explanation of IDE/BIOS limits.
LHDS, LCYL, and LSPT are the figures you should enter in a user-definable BIOS Drive Type (usually Type 46 and/or Type 47). If these figures aren't listed for an IDE drive and the actual physical parameters cannot be used, you can use the values from the IDE Quick Reference Chart (chapter 7). Alternatively, you many need to upgrade the BIOS to a newer version that supports the IDE Identify Drive command if the drive supports that command. See "ATA Commands" in Chapter Two for a discussion of this command.
Drive Specifications
(keep in mind that information on the page scans below isn't accurate very much — Rhett M. Hollander)
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