Make the hard disk always work in the best state

Our computer has been working for a whole year, and it is also strange and hard, especially the hard disk brother undertakes an important task of data storage. This is not the case. We can take advantage of this rare idle time to optimize the hard disk. It is not only a matter of improving the hard disk's work efficiency and extending its service life, but also a matter of pity.
Below, I will introduce the hard disk optimization settings in two major aspects:
I. BIOS Optimization

The BIOS plays a vital role in the performance of the hard disk. For example, the hard disk of Ultra ATA/66/100 cannot be identified due to the BIOS problem of the motherboard. Isn't that a big waste?

1. Standard CMOS Setup

Here we mainly optimize the working mode and type of the hard disk. We usually see the following common working modes: NORMAL, LBA, LARGE, and AUTO. We recommend that you select "AUTO" first, which is both convenient and secure. In addition, it is best to set "TYPE" to "User" (1), which can save the system time for detecting hard disk parameters and speed up startup.

2. BIOS Features Setup

We recommend that you set the "Boot Sequence" item to "C Only" so that you can skip the soft drive detection and direct the system from the hard disk, this reduces detection time and Prevents viruses from intruding into the system on a floppy disk.

The "ide hdd Block Mode" item is used to set the number of sectors of the IDE device Block Mode. Set this item to "Enabled". In this way, data can be transmitted in Block Mode to speed up disk access.

Ii. Hard Disk interface mode Optimization

Although the hard drive technology is not as fast as the increase in the CPU frequency, all mainstream hard drives now use the Ultra ATA/66/100 interface technology. Therefore, to make full use of the hard drive performance, enabling Ultra ATA/66/100 mode is essential. Media has introduced a lot about how to enable the Ultra ATA66/100 mode in Windows 9x/Me. Therefore, this article only introduces Windows 2000/XP:

1. Intel series Motherboard

After the Intel chipset driver is installed, although the system can correctly identify the hard disk controller and hard disk model, the interface mode of the hard disk will be downgraded, that is, Ultra ATA/100/66 will be reduced to Ultra ATA/66/33, and the Intel Ultra ATA Storgae driver must be installed separately. More information can be seen in the Companion window, default Transfer Mode indicates the transmission Mode in the Default state, and Current Transfer Mode indicates the transmission Mode in the Current state.
2. VIA series Motherboard
Although Windows 2000/XP correctly identifies the hard drive model, after installing the VIA quad-in-One Driver package, although the system can correctly identify the hard disk Controller "via bus Master pci ide Controller", the "Primmary IDE Controller (dual fifo)" and "Secondary IDE Controller (dual fifo) "But still use Microsoft's default driver, and VIADMATool does not take over the UDMA device as in Windows 9x/Me, so if the hard disk is Ultra ATA/100/66, it will be downgraded to Ultra ATA/66/33. Can you? * ** View WINFO32.
To solve this problem, you can download the IDE Miniport Driver released by Weisheng from the Driver house, after installation, you can clearly view the interface mode of the hard disk in the "VIA Bus Master pci ide Utility" and switch manually.

Correct use of hard disks and repair of Bad Sectors
If the disk has been used for a long time, various problems may occur, and the hard disk "bad track" is the most common problem. If you get the hard disk from the vendor during the warranty period, what should you do after the warranty period expires? The following are some methods for the author to maintain and maintain the hard disk, hoping to help you repair the hard disk.

I. Bad Sectors on Hard Disks

Hard Disk Bad Sectors are divided into two types: logical and physical bad sectors. The former is soft Bad Sectors, which are usually caused by software operations or improper use. The latter is the real physical bad sectors, it indicates that physical damage is caused on the hard disk track. It can only be solved by changing the usage of Hard Disk Partitions or sectors. In the following situations, your hard disk may have a bad track:

First, when you open, run, or copy a file, the operation on the hard disk slows down, in addition, the operation may fail for a long period of time, or the operation may take a long time to "chew" a certain area, or the disk reading is abnormal at the same time, or simply the Windows system prompts "the file cannot be read or written", which can indicate that a part of your hard disk has a bad track.

Second, when the Scandisk disk program runs automatically at startup, it must indicate that there are important errors to be fixed on your hard disk, such as bad channels. If you fail to run the program smoothly, it indicates that the hard disk must have a bad track. Of course, although the scan can pass, the red "B" mark indicates that it also has a bad track.

Third, the hard disk cannot be guided when the computer starts. After the disk is started with a floppy disk or a CD, you can see the hard disk drive letter, but you cannot perform operations on the disk or the operation is incorrect or you simply cannot see the drive letter, indicates that a bad track may occur on the hard disk. The specific performance is as follows: During the self-check process, the screen prompts "Hard disk drive failure" "Hard drive controller failure" or similar information, which can be determined as a hardware fault of the Hard drive or Hard drive controller; when the system prompts "Sector not found" or "General error in reading drive C" when reading and writing the hard disk, it indicates that the hard disk track has encountered physical damage.

Finally, problems such as crashes or "this file is damaged" may also be related to bad sectors on the hard disk.

Ii. Repair of bad hard drive Channels

Scandisk disk scanning program is the most common tool to solve the hard disk logical Bad Sectors, and our common format commands cannot fix any bad sectors on the hard disk. You need to understand this. If a bad track occurs on the hard disk, select the drive letter to be processed in "My Computer" in Windows and select "attribute ", select "check error status" in the "Tools" button that appears, click "Start Check", and then select "comprehensive check" in "Scan type ", the "Automatic repair error" is checked and "start" is enabled. It completely scans the hard disk and automatically fixes possible bad clusters. Secondly, in the DOS state, the hard disk has a bad track. When the computer is started, Scandisk is generally run automatically for scanning, and the bad cluster is marked with "B" (bad) in the dark. Of course, if the system does not scan the disk or cannot enter the Windows system when it is started, we can also use A floppy disk or a cd boot disk to start the computer, under the corresponding drive letter, such as ": run Scandisk *: (Note: * indicates the hard drive letter to be scanned). Press enter and repair the hard drive partition to be scanned and repaired.

Other tools such as NDD "disk doctor" and Pctools In the Norton toolkit scan hard disks is also the most common method to repair Bad Sectors on hard disks. The usage is very simple and has been introduced in many newspapers, you can try it out.

If there are unrecoverable bad clusters or physical bad sectors on the hard disk, you can use some disk software to separate these bad sectors into a single zone and hide them, which can prolong the service life of your hard disk.

Method 1: If a 4.3G hard disk has a serious physical bad track at 2 GB, the format cannot be used, and Scandisk or NDD cannot be used, but the disk can be normally partitioned. Find A partition formatting software Smart Fdisk, start the computer with the boot disk, enter the drive letter A:, run the software execution file SFdisk. EXE; then delete (DEL) the original partition to calculate the location of the bad track on the hard disk. In this example, create a basic partition of MB, format it quickly, activate it, and then dispose of the bad track of a logical partition of about 50 MB, then, you can use the quick Formatting Function to format the remaining hard disk space as a logical zone. Then, you can delete the zone where the 50 m bad track is located (DEL. Then restart, a hard disk with severe physical bad sectors will be repaired soon, and the head will no longer read the deleted Bad Sectors.

Method 2: Use the Fdisk partition provided by Windows. For example, a 1G hard disk cannot pass smoothly when formatted to 10%. Press Ctrl + Break to forcibly terminate the disk. Run Fdisk to create a 90 m DOS partition as a C disk, then create a 20 M Logical Disk D, and then create a Logical Disk E for the remaining 800 M. Exit Fdisk and run format E: If the grid reaches 10% again, then use Fdisk to create another 88M E disk, 10 M f disk, and the remaining 790M as G disk. Repeat the preceding operation until the operation is completed. Then, run Fdisk to delete the 10 m D and F disks, and then the rest is the good Disks without bad channels.

Method 3: Similarly, you can use disk software such as PartitionMagic and DiskManager to complete the task. For example, if PartitionMagic is used as the partitioning software, use the "check" command in PartitionMagic4 or the disk scanner in Windows to scan the disk and determine the location of the bad cluster on the hard disk, select "Advanced/bad Sector Retest" under the Operations menu; divide the hard disk of the bad cluster into multiple partitions, and then hide the partition of the bad cluster to avoid misoperation in Windows, this function is implemented through the Hide Partition menu item. This can also ensure the normal use of hard disks with severe bad sectors, and avoid the system from frequently reading and writing bad sectors to expand the area of Bad Sectors.

The system displays "TRACK 0 BAD, disk unusable", which means "zero TRACK damage, hard DISK unavailable" or red "B" appears in the 0 sector when scanning other hard disks with a DISK scanner ". Zero-sector damage to the hard disk is a headache for everyone. Generally, hard disks with such faults will be decommissioned. In fact, the rational use of some disk software to block the decommissioned 0 sector, and the replacement of 1 sector can bring back to life, such software such as Pctools9.0 and NU8.

Method 1: Take Pctools9.0 as an example. If a GB hard disk fails, run the DE. EXE file in the Pctools9.0 directory after the computer is started. Select Drive from the main menu, Select Physical from Drive type, Select by space, switch to Drives by pressing Tab, Select hard disk, and press OK to return to the main menu. Open the Select menu, and the Partition Table is displayed. After you Select the Table, the Partition Table information is displayed. The hard disk has two partitions. Locate the partition C, which starts from the hard disk's 0 Cylinder. Then, change the value 0 of the Beginning Cylinder in the 1 partition to 1, save and exit. After restarting the computer, press Del to enter COMS settings and run "ide auto detect". You can see that CYLS is changed from 782 to 781. After saving and exiting, repartition and format the hard disk to bring it back to life.

Method 2: Norton NU8.0 is also easy to use. For example, if a GB hard disk suffers a 0-core failure, go to the NU8 toolkit directory and run its main program NORTON. EXE, then you can select the "Recover disk" RESCUE option to back up the boot area, partition table, and other information of the hard disk. Select "disk editor DISKEDIT", select "OBJECT" after running, and select "partition table". The following figure shows the parameters of the hard disk: the SIDE is 0-63, the cluster CYLINDER is 0-255, and the SECTOR is 1-63. The main guide record and partition table information should be in the 0-side 0-column and 1-SECTOR. The task we need to do is to change the starting sector of the drive C from the 0-side 0-column 1-sector to the 0-side 1-column 1-sector, and move the cursor to manually modify it. In addition, you need to change the value based on the actual situation.