Drive Capacity - Seagate Decathlon 850 Installation Manual

6 Decathlon 850 Installation Guide, July 1995

Drive capacity

The BIOS your computer uses can limit the effective capacity of
your disc drive. (This document assumes you are using a DOS
operating system. If you are using another operating system,
refer to its user's guide regarding disc drive installation and
parameters.) It creates a representation of the drive's surface that
allows the computer to store and retrieve data. Recent develop-
ments in disc drive technology have allowed for increased physi-
cal capacity. However, parameter restrictions in some BIOSs limit
the size of the representation to 528 Mbytes. The full 854-Mbyte
capacity of the ST5850A is not accessible when this limit is
imposed. Here are some solutions for surpassing this barrier:
• Upgrade the BIOS to one that uses logical block addressing
(LBA) or a cylinder-head-sector (CHS) addressing scheme
that allows for more than 528 Mbytes.
• Use a host adapter that supports more than 528 Mbytes.
• Install the drive configured for dual-drive emulation. This fea-
ture makes the drive two logical drives for the computer. Each
logical drive is assigned a drive type in System Setup and is
partitioned and formatted. A second, physical drive cannot be
used when dual-drive emulation is used.
• Use the free EZ-Drive installation software that is stored on
the drive at the factory or an equivalent. (See page 17 for
instructions on transferring the software to a diskette. See
page 24 for instructions on installing and using EZ-Drive.)
Before you install your drive, evaluate your system to determine
the best installation strategy. This manual discusses standard
setup, dual-drive emulation and EZ-Drive installation processes.