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I've just installed a new hard disk, how will my system know this?
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Many PC system BIOS's are capable of automatically detecting the presence of a new hard drive by simply attaching the power and data cables to the new device. Keep in mind that the drive's jumper settings will still need to be configured for either master (drive 0) or slave (drive 1). Often enough, the user will need to enter the BIOS setup (often referred to as the "CMOS" settings) and ask the system to poll the ATA (IDE) bus. Generally, the BIOS will report the drive's logical cylinder, head and sector (CHS) values automatically - but this doesn't necessarily mean that the full physical capacity of the drive will be accessible. Most 486 based PC systems and many early model Pentium systems contain BIOS's that lack LBA (Logical Block Addressing) capability. This is despite their ability to automatically detect the drive's CHS values.
If your PC system is having difficulty detecting your disk drive's full capacity, the best solution is to contact your system vendor to determine if a BIOS update (that supports LBA) is available. If a BIOS update is not available or is inconvenient, another alternative is to download a Disk Manager software from the web. Software utilities of this type are capable of detecting and supporting the full capacity of ATA disk drives installed in PC systems that do not support LBA. They also function as a convenient tools for partitioning and formatting new drives.
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