Unit 5

Supporting Hard Drives and

Other Storage Devices

Andrews/Shelton/Pierce, CompTIA A+ Guide To IT Technical Support, 11 Edition ©2023 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned,
copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 1
 Module Objectives

• By the end of this module, you should be able to:

• Describe and contrast technologies used inside a hard drive and how a computer
communicates with a hard drive

• Select and install a hard drive

• Troubleshoot hard drives

• Support optical drives, solid-state storage, and flash memory devices

Andrews/Shelton/Pierce, CompTIA A+ Guide To IT Technical Support, 11 Edition ©2023 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned,
copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 2
 Hard Drive Technologies and Interface
Standards
• A hard disk drive (HDD), most often called a hard drive, is rated by the following characteristics:

− Physical size

− Capacity

− Speed

− Technologies used inside the drive

− Interface standards

Andrews/Shelton/Pierce, CompTIA A+ Guide To IT Technical Support, 11 Edition ©2023 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned,
copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 3
 Technologies and Form Factors of Hard Drives
(1 of 7)
• Two types of hardware technologies used inside the drive are magnetic and solid-state

• Magnetic Hard Drives

− A magnetic hard drive has one, two, or more platters, or disks that stack together and spin
in unison inside a sealed metal housing

− Firmware controls data reading, writing and motherboard communication

− Read/write heads are controlled by an actuator

− Data is organized in concentric circles, called tracks

 Tracks are divided into segments called sectors

− Form factors for internal magnetic hard drives are 3.5” for desktops and 2.5” for laptop
computers
Andrews/Shelton/Pierce, CompTIA A+ Guide To IT Technical Support, 11 Edition ©2023 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned,
copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 4
Technologies and Form Factors of Hard Drives
(2 of 7)

Andrews/Shelton/Pierce, CompTIA A+ Guide To IT Technical Support, 11 Edition ©2023 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned,
copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 5
 Technologies and Form Factors of Hard Drives
(3 of 7)
• Solid-state drive (SSD)

− Also called a solid-state device and is named so because it has no moving parts

− They are built using nonvolatile memory, similar to that used for USB flash drives

− Memory in an SSD is called NAND flash memory

− The life span is based on the number of write operations to the drive, and it can be
expressed as TBW (TeraBytes Written) or DWPD (Drive Writes Per Day)

− Solid-state drives are more expensive than magnetic hard drives, but they are faster, more
reliable, last longer, and use less power than magnetic drives

− Three popular form factors used by SSDs:

 2.5” SSD, M.2 SSD card, mSATA SSD, and PCI Express SSD expansion card

Andrews/Shelton/Pierce, CompTIA A+ Guide To IT Technical Support, 11 Edition ©2023 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned,
copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 6
Technologies and Form Factors of Hard Drives
(4 of 7)
Figure 5-7 An mSATA
card

Andrews/Shelton/Pierce, CompTIA A+ Guide To IT Technical Support, 11 Edition ©2023 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned,
copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 7
 Technologies and Form Factors of Hard Drives
(5 of 7)
• Hard Drive Performance

− Throughput is typically measure in MB/sec, and it describes the amount of data that flows
through a point the data path over one second’s time

− IOPS (input/output operations per second) measure the amount of read or write operations
performed in one second

− Latency measure the time required to process a data request or transaction

Andrews/Shelton/Pierce, CompTIA A+ Guide To IT Technical Support, 11 Edition ©2023 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned,
copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 8
 Technologies and Form Factors of Hard Drives
(6 of 7)
• Logical Block Addressing and Capacity

− Low-level formatting is when sector markings are written to the hard drive at the factory

 This is not the same as high-level formatting performed for OS installation

− The hard drive firmware, BIOS/UEFI, and the OS use logical block addressing (LBA) to
address all hard drive sectors

 The size of each block + the total number of blocks determine drive capacity

Andrews/Shelton/Pierce, CompTIA A+ Guide To IT Technical Support, 11 Edition ©2023 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned,
copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 9
 Technologies and Form Factors of Hard Drives
(7 of 7)
• S.M.A.R.T.

− S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology) is used to predict when a

drive is likely to fail

− System BIOS/UEFI uses S.M.A.R.T. to monitor drive performance, temperature, and other
factors

− For magnetic drives, it monitors disk spin-up time, distance between the head and the disk,
other mechanical activities of the drive

− If S.M.A.R.T. suspects a drive failure is about to happen, it displays a warning message

− It can be enabled and disabled in BIOS/UEFI setup

Andrews/Shelton/Pierce, CompTIA A+ Guide To IT Technical Support, 11 Edition ©2023 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned,
copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 10
Interface Standards Used by Hard Drives (1 of 7)

• IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics) standards allowed for one or two IDE connectors on a
motherboard, each using a 40-pin data cable

− Two types of IDE cables are the older cable with a 40-pin connector with 40 wires and a
newer cable with the same 40-pin connector and 80 thinner wires

− The maximum recommended length of an IDE cable is 18”

• SCSI (Small Computer System Interface) interface standard can support up to 7 or 15 SCSI-
compliant devices in a system

− A SCSI expansion card, called the SCSI host adapter, used a PCIe slot and provided one
external connector for an external SCSI device and one internal connector for internal SCSI
devices

Andrews/Shelton/Pierce, CompTIA A+ Guide To IT Technical Support, 11 Edition ©2023 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned,
copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 11
Interface Standards Used by Hard Drives (2 of 7)

This Adaptec SCSI card uses a PCIe ×1 slot and supports

up to
15 devices in a SCSI chain

Andrews/Shelton/Pierce, CompTIA A+ Guide To IT Technical Support, 11 Edition ©2023 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned,
copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 12
Interface Standards Used by Hard Drives (3 of 7)

• Most hard drives today use the SATA interface standards to connect to a motherboard

− SATA uses a serial data path, and a SATA data cable can accommodate a single SATA drive

• The three SATA standards include SATA Revision 3.x, SATA Revision 2.x, and SATA Revision 1.x

• SATA standards are used by all types of drives

− Supports hot-swapping (hot-plugging), where you can connect and disconnect a drive while
the system is running

• A SATA drive connects to one internal SATA connector on the motherboard via a 7-pin data
cable and uses a 15-pin SATA power connector

Andrews/Shelton/Pierce, CompTIA A+ Guide To IT Technical Support, 11 Edition ©2023 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned,
copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 13
 Interface Standards Used by Hard Drives (4 of 7)

Figure 5-15 This motherboard has Figure 5 A SATA cable connects a single SATA drive to a
two black and two red SATA II ports motherboard SATA connector

Andrews/Shelton/Pierce, CompTIA A+ Guide To IT Technical Support, 11 Edition ©2023 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned,
copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 14
Interface Standards Used by Hard Drives (5 of 7)

• The SATA 3.2 revision allows for PCIe and SATA to work together in a technology called SATA
Express

• A motherboard or expansion card can provide external SATA (eSATA) ports for external drives

• External SATA (eSATA) drives use a special external shielded serial ATA cable up to 2 meters
long
Figure 5-17 Two eSATA ports on a motherbo
• When purchasing a SATA hard drive, keep the following in mind:

− SATA standards for the drive and motherboard need to match

− If they do not match, the system runs at the slower speed

Andrews/Shelton/Pierce, CompTIA A+ Guide To IT Technical Support, 11 Edition ©2023 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned,
copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 15
Interface Standards Used by Hard Drives (6 of 7)

• NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory Express or NVM Express) interface standard is used only by SSDs

• Comparisons between NVMe and SATA:

− The most common SATA standard, SATA 3, transfers data at 6 Gb/sec

− NVMe uses either PCIe 4.0 or PCIe 3.0, which transfers data at 32 Gb/sec and 8Gb/sec
respectively

− The PCIe NVMe interface might be used in three ways:

 PCIe expansion card, U.2 or U.3 slot, or M.2 port

Andrews/Shelton/Pierce, CompTIA A+ Guide To IT Technical Support, 11 Edition ©2023 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned,
copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 16
Interface Standards Used by Hard Drives (7 of 7)

Figure 5-19 A PCIe x4 adapter card

provides one M.2 slot for an M.2 SSD

Andrews/Shelton/Pierce, CompTIA A+ Guide To IT Technical Support, 11 Edition ©2023 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned,
copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 17
 How to Select and Install Hard Drives

• Topics covered in this part of the chapter include the following:

− Selecting a hard drive

− Installation details for a SATA drive

− How to install a hard drive in a bay too wide for the drive

− Special considerations to install a hard drive in a laptop

− How to set up a RAID system

Andrews/Shelton/Pierce, CompTIA A+ Guide To IT Technical Support, 11 Edition ©2023 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned,
copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 18
 Selecting a Hard Drive (1 of 2)

• The motherboard and hard drive must support the same interface standard

• The following are some options for compatibility:

− SATA ports on a motherboard are usually color-coded to indicate which SATA standard the
port supports

− M.2 slots might support PCIe 4.0, PCIe 3.0, PCIe 2.0, SATA2.x, SATA3.x, or USB 3.0

− When an M.2 port with a card installed is using the SATA bus, one of the SATA ports might
be disabled

− NVMe expansion cards most likely use a PCIe x4 version 3.0 or newer slot

Andrews/Shelton/Pierce, CompTIA A+ Guide To IT Technical Support, 11 Edition ©2023 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned,
copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 19
 Selecting a Hard Drive (2 of 2)

• Other considerations when selecting a hard drive:

− Technology

− Form factor

− Capacity

− Data transfer rate as determined by the drive interface

− For magnetic drives, the spindle speed, which affects performance

Andrews/Shelton/Pierce, CompTIA A+ Guide To IT Technical Support, 11 Edition ©2023 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned,
copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 20
 Steps to Install a SATA Drive (1 of 6)

• A SATA drive might have jumpers used to set features such as the ability to power up from
standby mode

− If jumpers are present on a SATA drive, the factory has set them as they should be

• Some SATA drives have two power connectors

− Choose only one power connector to be used

− Never install two power cords to the drive at the same time

Andrews/Shelton/Pierce, CompTIA A+ Guide To IT Technical Support, 11 Edition ©2023 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned,
copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 21
Steps to Install a SATA Drive (2 of 6)

Figure 5-22 The rear of a SATA drive

with two power connectors

Andrews/Shelton/Pierce, CompTIA A+ Guide To IT Technical Support, 11 Edition ©2023 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned,
copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 22
 Steps to Install a SATA Drive (3 of 6)

• Step 1: As Best You Can, Protect the User’s Data

− Back up important data to other media and verify that you can access the data on that
media

• Step 2: Know Your Starting Point

− How is your system configured?

− Is everything working properly?

• Step 3: Read the Documentation and Prepare Your Work Area

− Read all installation instructions first

− Visualize all the steps in the installation

− Protect against ESD and avoid working on carpet

Andrews/Shelton/Pierce, CompTIA A+ Guide To IT Technical Support, 11 Edition ©2023 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned,
copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 23
 Steps to Install a SATA Drive (4 of 6)

• Step 4: Install the Drive

− Shut down the computer, unplug it, and press the power button to drain residual power

− Decide which bay will hold the drive

− Slide drive in the bay and secure it (use two screws on both sides)

− Use the correct motherboard SATA connector

− Connect a 15-pin SATA or 4-pin Molex power connector from the power supply to the drive

− Check all connections and power up the system

− Verify that the drive is recognized correctly using BIOS/UEFI setup

Andrews/Shelton/Pierce, CompTIA A+ Guide To IT Technical Support, 11 Edition ©2023 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned,
copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 24
Steps to Install a SATA Drive (5 of 6)

Figure 5-24 This drive bay uses tabs

to secure the drive

Andrews/Shelton/Pierce, CompTIA A+ Guide To IT Technical Support, 11 Edition ©2023 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned,
copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 25
 Steps to Install a SATA Drive (6 of 6)

Figure 5-6 A SATA data cable and SATA power cable

Figure 5-28 Connect the SATA power
cord to the drive

Andrews/Shelton/Pierce, CompTIA A+ Guide To IT Technical Support, 11 Edition ©2023 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned,
copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 26
 Installing a Drive in a Removable Bay

• Unplug the cage fan from its power source

• Turn the handle on each locking device counterclockwise to remove it

• Slide the bay to the front and out of the case

• Insert the hard drive in the bay and use two screws on each side to anchor the drive in the bay

• Slide the bay back into the case

• Reinstall the locking pins

• Plug in the cage fan power cord

Andrews/Shelton/Pierce, CompTIA A+ Guide To IT Technical Support, 11 Edition ©2023 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned,
copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 27
 Installing a Small Drive in a Wide Bay

Figure 6-19 The removable bay has a fan in front and is anchored to the case with
Figure 5-32 Use the universal bay kit
locking pins
to make the drive fit the bay

Andrews/Shelton/Pierce, CompTIA A+ Guide To IT Technical Support, 11 Edition ©2023 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned,
copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 28
 Installing an M.2 SSD Card

• Read the motherboard manual to find out the types of M.2 cards the board supports

• Do the following to install the card:

− 1. Measure the length of the card and decide which screw hole for the M.2 slot the card
requires

− 2. Slide the card straight into the slot, but not from an upward angle

− 3. Install the one screw in the standoff to secure the card to the motherboard

− 4. Start the system, go into BIOS/UEFI setup, and make sure the M.2 card is recognized by
the system

Andrews/Shelton/Pierce, CompTIA A+ Guide To IT Technical Support, 11 Edition ©2023 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned,
copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 29
 Installing a Hard Drive in a Laptop (1 of 2)

• The general steps to replace a hard drive in a laptop are as follows:

− Power down the system; remove peripherals; and remove the battery pack

− Remove a screw that holds the drive cover in place

− Remove the plastic cover from the drive and lift and remove the hard drive

− Insert the new drive in the bay, replace the cover and the screw, then power up the system

− BIOS/UEFI should recognize the new drive and search for an OS

− If drive is new, boot from the Windows setup or recovery DVD or USB flash drive and install
the OS

Andrews/Shelton/Pierce, CompTIA A+ Guide To IT Technical Support, 11 Edition ©2023 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned,
copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 30
Installing a Hard Drive in a Laptop (2 of 2)

Figure 5-36 Lift the drive out of the

case and then the bay

Andrews/Shelton/Pierce, CompTIA A+ Guide To IT Technical Support, 11 Edition ©2023 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned,
copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 31
 Setting Up Hardware RAID

• RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) is a technology that configures two or more hard
drives to work together as an array of drives

• Why use RAID?

− To improve performance by writing data to two or more hard drives to that a single drive is
not excessively used

− To improve fault tolerance by writing two copies of it, each to a different hard drive

Andrews/Shelton/Pierce, CompTIA A+ Guide To IT Technical Support, 11 Edition ©2023 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned,
copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 32
 Deploying RAID Techniques
• With Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID), many hard disks
can act as backups for each other to increase reliability and fault
tolerance, or they can act together as one very large drive.

• RAID - used by server operating systems for three purposes:

− Increased reliability (providing data recovery when a disk drive
fails and extending the useful life of disks)
− Increased storage capacity
− Increased speed

Andrews/Shelton/Pierce,
Guide to Operating Systems, 5th Edition CompTIA A+ Guide To IT Technical Support, 11 Edition ©2023 Cengage.33
All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned,
copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 33
 Deploying RAID Techniques
• RAID does this using disk striping it’s a technique for spreading data over multiple disk volumes

• There are many levels of RAID

− Only those that use disk striping distribute the load across multiple disks: RAID 0 and RAID 5

− Another RAID level, not discussed earlier, is RAID 10 which provides striping plus mirroring

− RAID levels 2, 3, and 4 are rarely used because levels 1, 5, and 10 provide better fault
tolerance

• Two ways to deploy RAID: hardware and software

− Software RAID is slower than hardware RAID

Andrews/Shelton/Pierce,
Guide to Operating Systems, 5th Edition CompTIA A+ Guide To IT Technical Support, 11 Edition ©2023 Cengage.34
All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned,
copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 34
 RAID LEVELS
• RAID 0 (Striping without Parity). Disk striping is a technique where data is divided into blocks and
spread in a fixed order among all the disks in the array. RAID 0 requires at least two disks. Its
principal advantage is to improve performance by spreading disk I/O over multiple drives.

Andrews/Shelton/Pierce, CompTIA A+ Guide To IT Technical Support, 11 Edition ©2023 Cengage.35

All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned,
copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 35
 RAID LEVELS
• RAID 1 (Mirroring). Mirroring requires two hard disks. The mirror disk is a duplicate of the data disk.
Each write operation is duplicated on the second disk in the set, introducing a small performance
overhead. A read operation can use either disk, boosting performance somewhat.

Andrews/Shelton/Pierce, CompTIA A+ Guide To IT Technical Support, 11 Edition ©2023 Cengage.36

All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned,
copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 36
 RAID LEVELS
• RAID 5 (Striping with Distributed Parity) Striping with distributed parity
(RAID 5) writes error checking information across all the disks in the
array. The data and parity information is managed so that the two are
always on different disks. If a single disk fails, enough information is
spread across the remaining disks to allow the data to be completely
reconstructed. Stripe sets with parity offer the best performance for
read operations. However, when a disk has failed, the read
performance is degraded by the need to recover the data using the
parity information. Also, all normal write operations suffer reduced
performance due to the parity calculation.

Andrews/Shelton/Pierce, CompTIA A+ Guide To IT Technical Support, 11 Edition ©2023 Cengage.37

All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned,
copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 37
 RAID LEVELS
• RAID 5 requires a minimum of three drives but can be configured with more. This allows more
flexibility in determining the overall capacity of the array than is possible with RAID 1.

Andrews/Shelton/Pierce, CompTIA A+ Guide To IT Technical Support, 11 Edition ©2023 Cengage.38

All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned,
copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 38
 RAID LEVELS
• RAID 1+0 (RAID 10). As described previously, RAID 0 is striping with no
parity (that is, no fault tolerance is provided). This provides high
throughput, but leaves the volume at risk. RAID 1 provides mirroring;
the highest achievable disk fault tolerance. RAID 1+0 (also called RAID
10) is a combination of both these configurations (nested RAID). A
logical striped volume is configured with two mirrored arrays. This
configuration offers excellent fault tolerance as one disk in each mirror
can fail and the array will still function.

Andrews/Shelton/Pierce, CompTIA A+ Guide To IT Technical Support, 11 Edition ©2023 Cengage.39

All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned,
copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 39
 RAID LEVELS
• RAID 1+0 (RAID 10)

Andrews/Shelton/Pierce, CompTIA A+ Guide To IT Technical Support, 11 Edition ©2023 Cengage.40

All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned,
copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 40
 Types of RAID
• Spanning uses two hard drives to hold a single Windows volume
− When one drive is full, data is written to the second drive

• RAID 0 writes to physical disks evenly across all disks so that no one disk
receives all activity

• RAID 1 duplicates data on one drive to another drive and is used for fault
tolerance

• RAID 5 stripes data across drives and uses parity checking and data is not
duplicated

• RAID 10 is a combination of RAID 1 and RAID 0 and takes at least 4 disks and
data is mirrored across pairs of disks

Andrews/Shelton/Pierce, CompTIA A+ Guide To IT Technical Support, 11 Edition ©2023 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned,
copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 41
 Types of RAID

Figure 6-26 Ways that hard drives can work together

A+ Guide to Hardware, 9th Edition

Andrews/Shelton/Pierce, 42Rights Reserved. May not be scanned,
CompTIA A+ Guide To IT Technical Support, 11 Edition ©2023 Cengage. All
copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 42
 Types of RAID

Figure 6-27 RAID 1 and RAID 10

A+ Guide to Hardware, 9th Edition

Andrews/Shelton/Pierce, 43Rights Reserved. May not be scanned,
CompTIA A+ Guide To IT Technical Support, 11 Edition ©2023 Cengage. All
copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 43
 How to Implement Hardware RAID (1 of 2)

• Hardware RAID can be set up by using a RAID-enabled motherboard

that is managed in BIOS/UEFI setup or a RAID controller card

• For best RAID performance all hard drives in an array should be

identical in brand, size, speed, and other features

• If Windows is to be installed on a RAID hard drive RAID must be

implemented before Windows is installed

Andrews/Shelton/Pierce, CompTIA A+ Guide To IT Technical Support, 11 Edition ©2023 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned,
copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 44
 How to Implement Hardware RAID (2 of 2)

• General directions to install a RAID 5 array using three matching SATA drives

− Install the drives in the computer case and connect each drive to motherboard

− Boot the system and enter BIOS/UEFI setup to verify the drives are recognized, select the
option to configure SATA, and select RAID

− When the system reboots, enter BIOS/UEFI, on the Advanced page, select Intel Rapid
Storage Technology and then select Create RAID Volume

− Under RAID Level, select RAID 5 (Parity) and Strip Size value

− Enter the size of the volume

− Select Create Volume to complete the RAID configuration

Andrews/Shelton/Pierce, CompTIA A+ Guide To IT Technical Support, 11 Edition ©2023 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned,
copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 45
 Troubleshooting Hard Drives

• Problems caused by hard drive during the boot can be caused by the following:

− Hard drive subsystem

− File system on the drive

− Files required by Windows when it begins to load

• When trying to solve a problem with the boot decide if the problem is caused by hardware or
software

Andrews/Shelton/Pierce, CompTIA A+ Guide To IT Technical Support, 11 Edition ©2023 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned,
copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 46
 Slow Performance (1 of 2)

• One of the most common complaints about a computer is that it is running slowly

• The overall performance of a system depends on the individual performances of the processor,
motherboard, memory, and hard drive

• To optimize a drive, you can use Windows tools or tools provided by the hard drive manufacturer

• To diagnose hard drive performance, use a hard drive speed test utility program such as
DISKSPD

• You can also use the Windows Defrag and Optimization tool (dfrgui.exe) optimize a hard drive

Andrews/Shelton/Pierce, CompTIA A+ Guide To IT Technical Support, 11 Edition ©2023 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned,
copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 47
 Slow Performance (2 of 2)

Figure 5-43 Windows reports volume

C: is trimmed and volume D: is not
fragmented

Andrews/Shelton/Pierce, CompTIA A+ Guide To IT Technical Support, 11 Edition ©2023 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned,
copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 48
 Migrating Data to a New SSD in a Laptop

• To perform the migration, complete the following steps:

− Install the cloning software on your laptop

− Attach the SATA-to-USB data transfer cable to a USB port on your laptop

− Attach the new SSD to the SATA-to-USB data transfer cable

− Follow the on-screen instructions to complete the data migration

− Remove the old hard drive, and install the new SSD into the laptop

− Install the drive management software from the SSD manufacturer

Use a SATA-to-USB adapter to

migrate data

Andrews/Shelton/Pierce, CompTIA A+ Guide To IT Technical Support, 11 Edition ©2023 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned,
copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 49
 Hard Drive Problems During the Boot (1 of 3)

• Hardware problems usually show up at POST

• If BIOS/UEFI cannot access the drive, the cause might be the drive, data cable, electrical system,
motherboard, or a loose connection

• Things to do and check before opening case:

− Check to see if BIOS/UEFI displays a numeric error code or other message during POST

− Check BIOS/UEFI setup for errors in the hard drive configuration

− Try booting from another bootable media

− For a RAID array, use the firmware utility to check the status of each disk in the array and
check for errors

Andrews/Shelton/Pierce, CompTIA A+ Guide To IT Technical Support, 11 Edition ©2023 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned,
copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 50
 Hard Drive Problems During the Boot (2 of 3)

• The following are a few of several things that can be tried if the problem is still not solved:

− Remove and reattach all drive cables

− If using a RAID or SATA controller card, remove and reseat it or place in a different slot

− Inspect the drive for damage

− Determine if hard drive is spinning by listening to it

− Check the cable for frayed edges

− Check the installation manual

− S.M.A.R.T. errors mean data should be backed up and drive replaced as soon as possible

Andrews/Shelton/Pierce, CompTIA A+ Guide To IT Technical Support, 11 Edition ©2023 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned,
copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 51
Hard Drive Problems During the Boot (3 of 3)

Figure 5-45 Select Command Prompt

, where you can execute the chkdsk
command

Andrews/Shelton/Pierce, CompTIA A+ Guide To IT Technical Support, 11 Edition ©2023 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned,
copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 52
 Supporting Other Types of Storage Devices

• This section covers the following topics:

− File systems that other types of storage devices use

− Other types of storage devices, such as, optical discs, USB flash drives, and memory cards

Andrews/Shelton/Pierce, CompTIA A+ Guide To IT Technical Support, 11 Edition ©2023 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned,
copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 53
 File Systems Used by Storage Devices
• A file system is the overall structure the OS uses to name, store, and organize files on a drive

− In Windows, each storage device is assigned a driver letter and is called a volume

• Using Windows to install a new file system on a device or logical drive is called formatting

• Types of file systems include the following:

− NTFS

− exFAT

− FAT32 and FAT

− CDFS (Compact Disc File System) or UDF (Universal Disk Format)

− A newer version of UDF is used by DVDs and BDs (Blu-ray discs)

Andrews/Shelton/Pierce, CompTIA A+ Guide To IT Technical Support, 11 Edition ©2023 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned,
copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 54
 Standards Used by Optical Discs and Drives (1
of 3)
• CDs (compact discs), DVDs (digital versatile discs or digital video discs), and BDs (Blu-ray discs)
use similar laser technologies

− Tiny lands and pits on surface represent bits read by a laser beam

• Optical Discs:

− Data is written to only one side of a CD

 Can be written to one or both sides of a DVD or Blu-ray disc

− DVD or Blu-ray disc can hold data in two layers on each side

Andrews/Shelton/Pierce, CompTIA A+ Guide To IT Technical Support, 11 Edition ©2023 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned,
copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 55
Standards Used by Optical Discs and Drives (2
of 3)

Figure 5-49 A DVD can hold data in

double layers on both the top and
bottom of the disc, yielding a
maximum capacity of 17 GB

Andrews/Shelton/Pierce, CompTIA A+ Guide To IT Technical Support, 11 Edition ©2023 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned,
copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 56
 Standards Used by Optical Discs and Drives (3
of 3)
• Optical Drives and Burners

− Blu-ray drives are backward compatible with DVD and CD technologies

− DVD drives are backward compatible with CD technologies

− Depending on the drive features, an optical drive might be able to read and write to BDs,
DVDs, and CDs

− A drive that can write to discs is commonly called a burner

− Today’s internal optical drives interface with the motherboard via a SATA connection

− An external drive might use an eSATA or USB port

Andrews/Shelton/Pierce, CompTIA A+ Guide To IT Technical Support, 11 Edition ©2023 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned,
copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 57
 Installing An Optical Drive

• Internal optical drives on today’s computer use a SATA interface

• An optical drive is usually installed in the drive bay at the top of a desktop case

− After it is installed in the bay, connect the data and power cables

• Windows supports optical drives using its own embedded drives without add-on drivers

− When Windows first starts after the drive is installed, it recognizes the drive and installs
drivers

• Use Device Manager to verify that the drive is installed with no errors

Andrews/Shelton/Pierce, CompTIA A+ Guide To IT Technical Support, 11 Edition ©2023 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned,
copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 58
 Solid-State Storage (1 of 2)

• Types of solid-state storage include SSDs, USB flash drives, and memory cards

• USB flash drives go by many names, including a flash pen drive, jump drive, thumb drive, and key
drive

− Flash drives might work at USB 2.0 or USB 3.0 speed and use FAT or exFAT file system

− Windows has embedded drivers to support flash drives

• Memory cards might be used in digital cameras, tablets, smartphones, MP3 players, digital
camcorders, and other portable devices

− Most laptops have memory card slots provided by a built-in smart card reader

Andrews/Shelton/Pierce, CompTIA A+ Guide To IT Technical Support, 11 Edition ©2023 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned,
copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 59
 Solid-State Storage (2 of 2)

• Secure Digital (SD) cards are the most popular memory cards

• The standards for capacity used by SD cards are 1.x (regular SD), 2.x (SD High Capacity or SDHC
), 3.x (SD eXtended Capacity or SDXC), and 7.x (SD Ultra Capacity or SDUC)

• SD cards come in three physical sizes: full-size, MiniSD, and MicroSD

• SD slots are backward compatible with SD cards

• However, you cannot use an SDHC card in an SD slot, and you cannot use an SDXC card in an
SDHC or SD slot

• Only use SDUC cards in SDUC slots

Andrews/Shelton/Pierce, CompTIA A+ Guide To IT Technical Support, 11 Edition ©2023 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned,
copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 60
Andrews/Shelton/Pierce, CompTIA A+ Guide To IT Technical Support, 11 Edition ©2023 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned,
copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 61
 Summary

• Now that the lesson has ended, you should be able to:

• Describe and contrast technologies used inside a hard drive and how a computer
communicates with a hard drive

• Select and install a hard drive

• Troubleshoot hard drives

• Support optical drives, solid-state storage, and flash memory devices

Andrews/Shelton/Pierce, CompTIA A+ Guide To IT Technical Support, 11 Edition ©2023 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned,
copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 62
 Knowledge Check Activity 5-1

• You have four hard drives on hand and need a replacement drive for a desktop system. The
documentation for the motherboard installed in the system says the board has six SATA 3 Gb/s
connectors and one IDE connector. Which of the four hard drives will work in the system and
yield the best performance?

a. Ultralock IDE ATA 4500-RPM 3.5" HDD

b. WD 3.5" 7200-RPM SATA Revision 3.0 HDD

c. Seagate IDE ATA 4500-RPM 3.5" HDD

d. WD 2.5" 4500-RPM SATA 6 Gb/s HDD

Andrews/Shelton/Pierce, CompTIA A+ Guide To IT Technical Support, 11 Edition ©2023 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned,
copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 63
 Knowledge Check Activity 5-1: Answer

• You have four hard drives on hand and need a replacement drive for a desktop system. The
documentation for the motherboard installed in the system says the board has six SATA 3 Gb/s
connectors and one IDE connector. Which of the four hard drives will work in the system and
yield the best performance?

• Answer: b. WD 3.5" 7200-RPM SATA Revision 3.0 HDD

• All drives will work in the system; for best performance, choose the fastest interface standard
the board supports (b and d) and the fastest RPM (the tiebreaker between b and d).

Andrews/Shelton/Pierce, CompTIA A+ Guide To IT Technical Support, 11 Edition ©2023 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned,
copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 64
 Knowledge Check Activity 5-2

• You want to install an SSD in your desktop computer, but the drive is far too narrow to fit snugly
into the bays of your computer case. Which of the following do you do?

a. Install the SSD in a laptop computer.

b. Buy a bay adapter that will allow you to install the narrow drive in a desktop case bay.

c. This SSD is designed for a laptop. Flash BIOS/UEFI so your system will support a laptop hard
drive.

d. Use a special SATA controller card that will support the narrow hard drive

Andrews/Shelton/Pierce, CompTIA A+ Guide To IT Technical Support, 11 Edition ©2023 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned,
copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 65
 Knowledge Check Activity 5-2: Answer

• You want to install an SSD in your desktop computer, but the drive is far too narrow to fit snugly
into the bays of your computer case. Which of the following do you do?

• Answer: b. Buy a bay adapter that will allow you to install the narrow drive in a desktop case bay.

• To see an example of the bay adapter, refer to Figure 5-33 in the text.

Andrews/Shelton/Pierce, CompTIA A+ Guide To IT Technical Support, 11 Edition ©2023 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned,
copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 66