Acronis Migrate Easy 7.0

Users Guide

www.acronis.com

Copyright Acronis, Inc., 20002004. All rights reserved. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. OS/2 is a registered trademark of IBM Corporation. UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group. Windows and MS-DOS are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. All other trademarks and copyrights referred to are the property of their respective owners. Distribution of substantively modified versions of this document is prohibited without the explicit permission of the copyright holder. Distribution of this work or derivative work in any standard (paper) book form for commercial purposes is prohibited unless prior permission is obtained from the copyright holder. DOCUMENTATION IS PROVIDED AS IS AND ALL EXPRESS OR IMPLIED CONDITIONS, REPRESENTATIONS AND WARRANTIES, INCLUDING ANY IMPLIED WARRANTY OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE OR NON-INFRINGEMENT, ARE DISCLAIMED, EXCEPT TO THE EXTENT THAT SUCH DISCLAIMERS ARE HELD TO BE LEGALLY INVALID.
Copyright Acronis, Inc., 20002004
End-user license agreement
END-USER LICENSE AGREEMENT
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3. A. B. C. D. E. F. G.

Acronis has the right to terminate this license if there is a violation of its terms or default by the Original Purchaser. Upon termination for any reason, all copies of the Software must be immediately returned to Acronis, and the Original Purchaser shall be liable to Acronis for any and all damages suffered as a result of the violation or default. ENTIRE RISK THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE SOFTWARE IS WITH YOU THE PURCHASER. ACRONIS DOES NOT WARRANT THAT THE SOFTWARE OR ITS FUNCTIONS WILL MEET YOUR REQUIREMENTS OR THAT THE OPERATION OF THE SOFTWARE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED OR ERROR FREE OR THAT ANY DEFECTS WILL BE CORRECTED. NO LIABILITY FOR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES - IN NO EVENT SHALL ACRONIS OR ITS VENDORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER (INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, DAMAGES FOR THE LOSS OF BUSINESS PROFITS, BUSINESS INTERRUPTION, LOSS OF BUSINESS INFORMATION, OR ANY OTHER PECUNIARY LOSS) ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ACRONIS HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

Table of contents

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION....5

1.1 What is Acronis Migrate Easy?... 5 Upgrade Your Hard Disk Drive in Minutes!... 5 Upgrading Has Never Been Easier or Safer!... 5 Acronis Migrate Easy key features:... 5 Navigating the Guide.... 5 1.2 Software usage terms and conditions... 6 1.3 Technical Support.... 6
CHAPTER 1. INSTALLATION AND OPERATION...7
1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 2.1 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 A.1 A.1.1 A.1.2 A.1.3 A.2 A.2.1 A.2.2 A.2.3 A.2.4 A.2.5 B.1 B.2 B.2.1 B.2.2 B.2.3 B.2.4 B.2.5 B.2.6 Bundle contents.... 7 System requirements.... 7 Acronis Migrate Easy installation... 7 Running Acronis Migrate Easy.... 8 Removing the program.... 8 Main program window... 9 General information.... 11 Security.... 12 Executing transfers.... 12 Cloning with manual partitioning... 19 Selecting a hard disk... 21 Creating a new partition... 22 Selecting the file system type... 22 Selecting the partition type... 22 Disk add script.... 23 Installing hard disks in computers... 25 Installing a hard disk, general scheme... 25 Motherboard sockets, IDE cable, power cable.. 26 Installation modes, jumpers... 27 BIOS.... 28 Setup utility.... 28 Standard CMOS setup menu.... 28 Arranging boot sequence, advanced CMOS setup menu.. 30 AwardBIOS.... 31 Hard disk initialization errors.... 35 Hard disk partitions.... 36 File systems.... 36 FAT16.... 37 FAT32.... 37 NTFS.... 37 Linux Ext2... 38 Linux Ext3... 38 Linux ReiserFS.... 38

CHAPTER 2. GENERAL PROGRAM INFORMATION..9 CHAPTER 3. TRANSFERRING THE SYSTEM TO A NEW DISK..11
CHAPTER 4. ADDING A NEW HARD DISK...21
APPENDIX A. HARD DISKS AND BIOS SETUP...25
APPENDIX B. PARTITIONS AND FILE SYSTEMS...36

Introduction

1.1 What is Acronis Migrate Easy?
Upgrade Your Hard Disk Drive in Minutes! Its finally time. Youve put it off as long as possible, but its now time to upgrade to a new hard disk drive. And if youre like most users, youre not excited, youre scared. You think youre in for a large project spanning several days of tedious work. Luckily for you, theres Acronis Migrate Easy, an award-winning solution that migrates all your computer data to a new hard disk drive in minutes, and keeps all operating systems and applications fully functional just the way you had them. Why take days upgrading when you can use Acronis Migrate Easy and be finished in minutes? Upgrading Has Never Been Easier or Safer! And with Acronis Migrate Easy, you dont have to be a computer whiz to upgrade to a new hard disk drive. Simply make a few choices when prompted, and Acronis Migrate Easy will take care of everything else automatically. It will even show you a preview of the migration so you are sure to migrate exactly what you intend to. Within minutes, your data, including applications and operating systems, will be safely on your new hard disk drive and ready to go! Acronis Migrate Easy key features: Clone an old hard disk drive to a new one Automatic and manual hard disk upgrade modes Install new hard disk drive as a boot disk or as an additional storage device Redeploy old hard disk Resize transferred partitions to match new hard disk size Securely clean and wipe old hard disk Navigating the Guide This users guide contains the following main chapters: Chapter 1 Installation and operation contains detailed information about the installation and running Acronis Migrate Easy. Chapter 2 General program information describes components parts of the software and users interface. Chapter 3 Transferring the system to a new disk - describes process of transferring of system on a new hard disk by cloning of an old disk

Chapter 4 Adding a new hard disk - describes how to add a new disk only to store data, leaving the system on the old disk. Appendix A Hard disks and BIOS setup - provide you with extra information on the hard disk organization, how information is stored on disks, how disks should be installed in the computer and plugged into the motherboard, configuring disks with BIOS, partitions and file systems, and how operating systems interact with disks. Appendix B Partitions and file systems - contains general information on disk partitioning and main file systems types.
Software usage terms and conditions
The conditions for Acronis Migrate Easy software usage are described in the License Agreement included with this package. The supplied registration card is the confirmation of your legal purchase and usage of Acronis Migrate Easy on your system. Each registration card has a unique registration number. Under current legislation, the License Agreement is considered a contract between you and Acronis Inc. The contract is a legal document and its violation may result in legal action. Illegal use and/or distribution of this software will be prosecuted.

Technical Support

Users of legally purchased copies of Acronis Migrate Easy are entitled to free e-mail technical support from Acronis. If you have installation or working problems that you cant solve by yourself using this manual and the readme.txt file, e-mail or fax the technical support team. Before you do this, you will have http://www.acronis.com/registration/ or by mail. to register your copy at
When contacting technical support, you must provide the number of your Acronis Migrate Easy copy that is written on a registration card bundled with the program. This number is made up of five sets of five characters separated by hyphens; there is a total of 25 letters and numbers. For more information visit http://www.acronis.com/support/ Technical support e-mail address: support@acronis.com Fax technical support at: (650) 875-7587
Installation and operation
Chapter 1. Installation and operation

Program menu

The program menu line contains the Operations, View, Tools, and Help items. The Operations menu changes when either an operation icon or scheduled task is selected. In the first case, the menu contains only Start Now to execute the selected operation. The Tools menu contains the following items: Create Bootable Rescue Media runs the bootable media creation procedure The View menu contains items for managing the program window look: Toolbars contains commands that control toolbar icons Common Task Bar enables/disables common task panel in the left area Status Bar enables/disables the status bar Tiles Icons List controls how operation icons look Refresh refreshes the main program window The Help menu allows you to invoke help and get information about Acronis Migrate Easy.
Transferring the system to a new disk
Chapter 3. Transferring the system to a new disk

3.1 General information

Sooner or later, many PC users find that their hard disk is too small. If you just dont have space for more data, you can add another disk just for data storage as described in the following chapter. However, you might find that your hard disk does not have enough space for the operating system and installed applications, preventing you from updating your software. In this case, you have to transfer the system to a higher-capacity hard disk. To do that, you must first install the disk in the PC. Although this operation is relatively simple, we do not recommend that inexperienced users perform it themselves; you should have a professional to do it. If you still want to do this yourself, see Appendix B.
If a PC doesnt have a bay for another hard disk, you can temporarily install it in place of your CD-ROM. If its still impossible, you can clone a hard disk by creating its image and restoring it to a new hard disk with larger partitions. Creating an image requires Acronis True Image software.
There are two transfer modes available: automatic and manual. In the automatic mode, you will only have to take a few simple actions to transfer all the data, including partitions, folders and files, to a newer disk. You also will make the disk bootable if the original disk was bootable. There will be only one difference between these disks partitions on the newer disk will be larger. Everything else, including the installed operating systems, data, disk labels, settings, software and everything else on the disk will remain the same.
This is the only result available in the automatic mode. The program can only duplicate the original disk layout to the new one. To obtain a different result, you will have to answer additional questions about cloning parameters.
The manual mode will provide more data transfer flexibility. 1. You will be able to select the method of partition and data transfer: as is new disk space is proportionally distributed between the old disk partitions new disk space is distributed manually

Note that no real changes or data destruction will be performed at this moment! For now, the program will just create a cloning script. All changes will be implemented only when you click Proceed, after the script is formed.
Old and new disk partition layout
If you selected the automatic mode before, the program will not ask you for any further information. You will see the window graphically illustrating information (as rectangles) about the source disk (partitions and unallocated space) and the destination disk layout. Along with the disk number, some additional information is provided: Partition number, volume label (e.g. SYSTEM), file system (e.g. FAT16 or FAT32), and partition size in megabytes (MB). Partition types primary, logical and unallocated space are marked with different colors. Next you will see the cloning script.

Old disk data

If you selected the manual mode, the program will ask you what to do with the old disk: Create a new partition layout All existing partitions and their data will be deleted (but they will also be cloned to the new disk, so you wont lose them) Keep data leave the old disk partitions and data intact Destroy data delete partitions (and data!) from the old disk
If you are going to sell or dispose of your old disk, we recommend that you make sure you destroyed all the data on it. If you are going to keep it for data storage, you can create a new partition layout on it. In this case, the disk will be ready right after cloning is complete. To protect yourself from unforeseen consequences, it would be better to leave the old disk data intact, as you will be able to delete it later.
Destroying the old disk data
If you elected to destroy data, you will have to select the destruction method now: Quick one-pass destruction Normal guaranteed multipass destruction
The second method takes more time, but makes it impossible to recover data afterwards, even with special equipment. The first method is less secure, but is still suitable for most cases.
Selecting partition transfer method
Acronis Migrate Easy will offer you the following data transfer methods: As is Proportional the new disk space will be proportionally distributed between cloned partitions Manual you will specify the new size and other parameters yourself
If you elect to transfer information "as is," a new partition will be created for every old one with the same size and type, file system and label. The unused space will become unallocated. Further, you will be able to use the unallocated space to create new partitions or to enlarge the existing partitions with special tools, such as Acronis Partition Expert. As a rule, "as is" transfers are inexpedient, as they leave much unallocated space on the new disk. If you transfer data proportionally, each partition will be enlarged, according to the proportion of the old and new disk capacities. Using the "as is" method, Acronis Migrate Easy also transfers unsupported and damaged file systems. FAT16 partitions are enlarged less than others, as they have the 4 GB size limit.

Be careful! Clicking Back in this window will reset all size and location changes that you've selected, so you will have to specify them again.
First, select a partition to resize. It will be underlined in red. Resize and relocate it on the next step. You can do this by both entering values to Unallocated space before, Partition size, Unallocated space after fields, by dragging partition borders or the partition itself. If the cursor turns to two vertical lines with left and right arrows, it is pointed at the partition border and you can drag it to enlarge or reduce the partitions size. If the cursor turns to four arrows, it is pointed at the partition, so you can move it to the left or right (if there's unallocated space near it). Having provided the new location and size, click Next. You will be taken two steps back to the partition layout. You might have to perform some more resizing and relocation before you get the layout you need.

Adding a new hard disk

Chapter 4. Adding a new hard disk
If you don't have enough space for your data (e.g. family photos and videos), you can either replace the old disk with a new higher-capacity one (data transfers to new disks are described in the previous chapter), or add a new disk only to store data, leaving the system on the old disk. If the PC has space for another disk, it would be easier to add a disk drive than to clone one. To add a new disk, you must first install it in your PC. Although this operation is relatively simple, we do not recommend it for inexperienced users, and advise them to have a professional do it. If you still want to install it yourself, first take the time to study Appendix B.

Selecting a hard disk

Select the disk that you've added to the PC.
This window might be bypassed if the program detects the new disk itself. In this case, you will immediately proceed to the New partition creation.
If there are any partitions on the new disk, they must be deleted first. Select Delete partitions on the destination hard disk and click Next to continue.

Creating a new partition

Next you will see the current partition layout. Initially, all disk space will be unallocated. This will change after you add new partitions. To create a partition, select Create new partition in unallocated space and click Next to perform steps required by the partition creation wizard. If you make a mistake at partitioning, click Back to redo the process. After you create the necessary partition layout, uncheck the Create new partition in unallocated space box and click Next.

10. After finishing the work, turn off the computer, set the jumper on the disk to the master position if you want to make the disk bootable (or leave it in slave position if the disk is installed as additional data storage). A.1.2 Motherboard sockets, IDE cable, power cable There are two slots on the motherboard to which the hard disks can be connected: primary IDE and secondary IDE. Hard disks with an IDE interface are connected to the motherboard via a 40- or 80thread flat marked cable one of the threads of the cable is red. Two IDE hard disks can be connected to each of the sockets, i.e. there can be up to 4 hard disks of this type installed in the PC. (There are three plugs on each IDE cable: 2 for hard disks and 1 for the motherboard socket.) As noted, IDE cable plugs are usually designed so that there is only one way to connect them to the sockets. Usually, one of the pinholes is filled on the cable plug, and one of the pins facing the filled hole is removed from the motherboard socket, so it becomes impossible to plug the cable in the wrong way. In other cases, there is a jut on the plug on the cable, and an indentation in the socket of the hard disk and of the motherboard. This also ensures that there only one way to connect the hard disk and the motherboard. In the past, this design of plug did not exist, so there was an empirical rule: the IDE cable is connected to the hard disk socket so that the marked thread is the closest to the power cable, i.e. the marked thread connected to pin #1 of the socket. A similar rule was used for connecting cables with the motherboard. Incorrect connection of the cable with either the hard disk or the motherboard does not necessarily damage the electronics of the disk or the motherboard. The hard disk is simply not detected or initialized by BIOS.
There are some models of hard disks, especially the older ones, for which incorrect connection damaged the electronics of the drive. We will not describe all the types of hard disks. Currently the most widespread are those with IDE or SCSI interfaces. Unlike IDE hard disks, there can be from six to 14 SCSI hard disks installed in your PC. However, you need a special SCSI controller (called a host adapter) to connect them. SCSI hard disks are not usually used in personal computers (workstations), but are found mostly in servers.

Aside from an IDE cable, a 4-thread power cable must be connected to the hard disks. There is only one way to plug in this cable.
Installation modes, jumpers 1. A hard disk can be installed in a computer as master or as slave. The mode of hard disk installation is defined by the position of special connectors (called jumpers) on the hard disk. The jumpers are either located on the electronic board of the hard disk or a special socket that provides for the connection of the hard disk and the motherboard. There is usually a sticker on the drive that explains the markings. Typical markings are DS, SP, CS and PK. Each jumper position corresponds to one hard disk(s) installation mode: DS master/factory default SP slave (or no jumper required) CS cable select for master/slave: the purpose of the hard disk is determined by its physical position with respect to the motherboard PK jumper parking position: the position where one can put the jumper if it is not necessary in the existing configuration
The hard disk with the jumper in master position is treated by the basic input/output system (BIOS) as bootable. The jumpers on hard disks that are connected to the same cable can be in the cable select for master/slave position. In this case, BIOS will deem as master the disk that is connected to the IDE cable closer to the motherboard than the other one.
Unfortunately, hard disk markings were never standardized. You might well find that markings on your hard disk differ from the ones described above. Moreover, for the older types of hard disks, their purpose could be defined by two jumpers instead of one. You should study the markings carefully before installing your hard disk in the computer.
It is not enough to physically connect the hard disk to the motherboard and set the jumpers properly for the hard disk to function hard disks have to be properly configured with the motherboard BIOS.
When you turn on your computer, you often see a number of short text messages before you see the splash screen of your operating system. These messages are from the POST (power-on self test) program that belongs to BIOS and is executed by the processor. BIOS, or the basic input/output system, is a program that resides in the permanent memory chip (ROM or flash BIOS) on the motherboard of your computer and is its key element. The version of BIOS that you use knows all the peculiarities of all the components of the motherboard: processor, memory, integrated devices. BIOS versions are provided by the manufacturers of motherboards. Main BIOS functions are: POST checking of processor, memory and I/O devices initial configuring of all software-manageable parts of the motherboard initialization of operating system (OS) booting process Among numerous components of the computer, initial configuring is necessary for the external memory subsystem that controls hard disk drives, floppy disk drives, CD-ROM drives, DVDs and other devices.

Translation mode is how sector addresses are translated. This parameter appeared because in BIOS versions, there were limitations to the maximum address capacity of disks, which is 504 MB (1024 cylinders x 16 heads x 63 sectors x 512 bytes). There are two ways to bypass this limitation: (1) switch from physical to logical sector addresses (LBA), (2) use mathematics to reduce the number of addressed sectors (cylinders) and increase the number of heads; this method is called Large Disk (Large). The simplest decision is to set the value of this parameter to Auto.
If there are several hard disks connected to your motherboard, but you do not want to use some of them at the moment, you have to set the Type of these disks to Not Installed. Parameters of hard disks can be set manually with the help of information provided by the hard disk manufacturer on its case, but it is easier to use the IDE autodetection utility that is usually included in modern BIOS versions. The utility is sometimes a separate BIOS menu item and sometimes is included in the standard CMOS setup menu.
Please note that in Appendix A. Hard disks and BIOS setup we have described the general details of physical hard disk structure. Built-in IDE hard disk controls mask the physical disk structure. As a result, the BIOS of the motherboard sees logical cylinders, heads and sectors. We are not going to elaborate on this issue here, but knowing about this can sometimes be useful.
Arranging boot sequence, advanced CMOS setup menu Aside from standard CMOS setup, BIOS menu usually has an advanced CMOS setup item. Here you can adjust the boot sequence: C:; A:; CD-ROM:.
Please note that boot sequence management differs for various BIOS versions, e.g. for AMI BIOS, AWARDBIOS and brand-name hardware manufacturers.
Several years ago, the operating system boot sequence was hard-coded into the BIOS. An operating system could be booted either from a diskette (drive A:), or from the hard disk C:. That was the sequence in which the BIOS queried external drives: if drive A: was ready, BIOS attempted to boot an operating system from a diskette. If the drive was not ready or there was no system area on diskette, BIOS tried to boot an operating system from hard disk C:. At present, BIOS allows booting operating systems not only from diskettes or hard disks, but also from CD-ROMs, DVDs and other devices. If there are several hard disks installed in your computer labeled as C:, D:, E:, and F:, you can adjust the boot sequence so that an operating system is booted from, for example, disk E:. In this case, you have to set the boot sequence to look like E:, CD-ROM:, A:, C:, D:.

This does not mean that booting is done from the first disk in this list; it only means that the first attempt to boot an operating system is to boot it from this disk. There may be no operating system on disk E:, or it can be inactive. In this case, BIOS queries the next drive in the list. Errors can happen during the booting, see A.2.5 Hard disk initialization errors.
The BIOS numbers disks according to the order in which they are connected to IDE controllers (primary master, primary slave, secondary master, secondary slave); next go the SCSI hard disks. This order is broken if you change the boot sequence in BIOS setup. If, for example, you specify that booting has to be done from hard disk E:, numbering
starts with the hard disk that would be the third in usual circumstances (it is usually the secondary master). After you have installed the hard disk in your computer and have configured it in BIOS, one can say that the PC (or the motherboard) knows about its existence and its main parameters. However, it is still not enough for an operating system to work with the hard disk. A.2.4 AwardBIOS Below, we provide an example of configuring hard disks in AwardBIOS. The Main AwardBIOS menu, which is responsible for configuring hard disks on motherboards for Celeron, Pentium II, III, IV and AMD Athlon, Duron and Sempron processors usually looks like this:
AwardBIOS Setup Utility Main System Time System Date Legacy Diskette A Legacy Diskette B Floppy 3 Mode Support Primary Master Primary Slave Secondary Master Secondary Slave Language Supervisor Password User Password Halt On Installed Memory Advanced Power [16:16:35] [01/10/2001] [1.44M, 3.5in] [None] [Disabled] [Auto] [Auto] [Auto] [Auto] [English] [Disabled] [Disabled] [All but Disk/Keyboard] [Disabled] Boot Exit Item Specific Help: <Enter> to go to submenu.
F1 Help Select Item -/+ Change Values F5 Setup Defaults Esc Exit Select Menu Enter Select Sub-Menu F10 Save and Exit
Place the marker on the Primary Master line and press the Enter key to get to the screen that looks like this:
AwardBIOS Setup Utility Main Primary Master [Auto] Type [Auto] Item Specific Help: <Enter> to select the type of the IDE drive. [User Type HDD] allows you to set each entry on your own.
Warning: Ultra DMA Mode 3/4/5 can be enabled only when BIOS detects Shielded 80-pin cable.
Place the marker on the value of the Type parameter ([Auto] in this case) and press the Enter key to open the list of possible values of this parameter; for example:
None Auto User Type HDD CD-ROM LS-120 ZIP-100 MO Other ATAPI Device

After setting the specified parameters, use the Left or Right keys to select the Exit menu item. Reply positively to the prompt on saving the specified parameters. For AwardBIOS for motherboards for Pentium, Pentium Pro processors (i.e the ones older than those described above) and AMD-K5/K6, the standard CMOS setup screen looks like this:
ROM PCI/ISA BIOS (2A69JA2A) STANDARD CMOS SETUP AWARD SOFTWARE, INC.
Date (mm:dd:yy) Time (hh:mm:ss) HARD DISKS Primary Master Primary Slave Secondary Master Secondary Slave Drive A : 1.44 M Drive B : None Video : EGA/VG Halt On: All Errors ESC : Quit F1 : Help : (Shift) F2 Select Item Change Color Base Memory: Extended Memory: Other Memory: Total Memory: 0K 0K 512K 512K : Fri, : 11: : : : : : May 33: 1998
TYPE SIZE CYLS HEAD PRECOMP LANDZ SECTOR MODE Auto Auto Auto Auto None 0 None 0

PU/PD/+/- : Modify

The Type parameter can have Auto, Not Installed or User Defined values. In the latter case, you have to specify the values of other parameters manually (except MODE) according to the information on the case of the hard disk.
The purpose of the MODE and LANDZ parameters is described in the note above. The PRECOMP parameter is the so-called precompensation parameter and is important only for the older hard disks (MFM and RLL). IDE disks ignore this parameter.
In earlier BIOS versions, the boot sequence was set in the BIOS FEATURES setup section in the Boot Sequence line where you could select the most typical boot sequences, for example C:; A:;CD-ROM: or CD-ROM:; C:; A:, and other. A.2.5 Hard disk initialization errors Devices are usually initialized successfully, but sometimes errors can happen. Typical errors related to hard disks are reported by the following messages: PRESS A KEY TO REBOOT This error message is not directly related to errors during hard disk initialization. However, it appears, for example, when the boot program finds no operating system on the hard disk, or when the primary partition of the hard disk is not set as active. DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER This message appears when the boot program finds no available boot device, be that a floppy or a hard disk, or a CD-ROM. C: DRIVE ERROR C: DRIVE FAILURE ERROR ENCOUNTERED INITIALIZATION HARD DRIVE This message appears when it is impossible to access the C: disk. If the disk is known to be functional, the reason for this error message is probably incorrect settings/connections of: hard disk parameters in BIOS setup jumpers on the controller (master/slave) interface cables It is also possible that the device is out of order, or the hard disk is not formatted.
Appendix B. Partitions and file systems

B.1 Hard disk partitions

The mechanism that allows you to install several operating systems on a single PC or to carve up a single physical disk drive into multiple logical disk drives is called partitioning. Partitioning is performed by special applications. In MS-DOS and Windows, these are FDISK and Disk Administrator.

Acronis offers a special application suite that will handle disk administration tasks. This product is Acronis Disk Director Suite. It includes disk partitioning, multibooting, partition recovery and other disk management applications.
Partitioning programs perform the following: create a primary partition create an extended partition that can be split into several logical disks set an active partition (applied to a single primary partition only)
Information about partitions on a hard disk is stored in a special disk area in the 1st sector of cylinder 0, header 0, which is called the partition table. This sector is called the master boot record, or MBR. A physical hard disk might contain up to 4 partitions. This limit is forced by the partition table that is suitable for 4 strings only. However, this does not mean you can have only 4 operating systems on your PC! Actually, existing applications called disk managers support far more operating systems on disks. For example, Acronis OS Selector enables you to install up to 100 operating systems!

File systems

An operating system gives the user the ability to work with data by supporting some type of file system on a partition. All file systems are made of structures that are necessary to store and manage data. These structures are usually composed of operating system boot sectors, folders and files. File systems perform the following basic functions: track occupied and free disk space (and bad sectors, if any) support folders and file names track physical location of files on disks
Different operating systems use different file systems. Some operating systems are able to work with only one file system while others can use several of them. Here are some of the most widely used file systems. B.2.1 FAT16 The FAT16 file system is widely used by DOS (DR-DOS, MS-DOS, PC-DOS, PTS-DOS and other), Windows 98/Me, and Windows NT/2000/XP operating systems and is supported by most other systems. Main features of FAT16 are the file allocation table (FAT) and clusters. FAT is the core of the file system. To increase data safety, it is possible to have several copies of the FAT (there are usually two of them) on a single disk. A cluster is a minimum data storage unit in FAT16 file system. One cluster contains a fixed number of sectors. FAT stores information about what clusters are free, what clusters are bad, and also defines in which clusters files are stored. The FAT16 file system has a 2GB limit that permits a maximum 65,507 clusters that are 32Kb in size. (Windows NT/2000/XP support partitions up to 4GB with up to 64Kb clusters). Usually the smallest cluster size is used to make the total cluster amount within the 65,507 range. The larger a partition is, the larger its clusters are.