Seagate Marathon 420sl User manual

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Marathon 420sl
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(ST9420A, ST9420AG)
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AT Interface Drives
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Installation Guide
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©1995 Seagate Technology, Inc. All rights reserved
Publication Number: 36305-101, Rev. A
August 1995
Seagate, Seagate Technology and the Seagate logo are regis-
tered trademarks of Seagate Technology, Inc. SeaFAX, Sea-
FONE, SeaBOARD and SeaTDD are trademarks of Seagate
Technology, Inc. Otherproduct namesareregistered trademarks
or trademarks of their owners.
Seagate reserves the right to change, without notice, product
offerings or specifications. No part of this publication may be
reproduced in any form without written permissionfrom Seagate
Technology, Inc.
Contents
Read before you begin ... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Configuring the drive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Attaching cables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Mounting the drive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Configuring your computer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Formatting and partitioning the drive . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Installation troubleshooting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Compatibility notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Technical support services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Storing and shipping your drive . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Read before you begin ...
Application. This drive uses the ATA interface and is designed
for IBM AT and compatible personal computers. It is intended for
use with UL-listed computers or similar products.
Warning. Turn off the computer (and remove the battery if you
have a notebook or laptop computer) before you
open the case or touch any internal components.
Caution. Special training or tools may be needed to service
laptopandnotebookcomputers.Insomecases,open-
ing the case may void your warranty.
Static discharge. Observe the following precautions:
•Before handling any components, put on a grounded wrist strap.
•Use antistatic padding on all work surfaces.
•Avoid static-inducing carpeted areas.
•Keep the drive in its static-shielded bag until you are ready to
completethe installation.Donotattachanycables tothedrive
while it is in its static-shielded bag.
•Handle the drive by its edges or frame.
•Do not touch the I/O connector pins or the circuit board.
Drive handling. The drive is extremely fragile—handle it with
care. Do not attach labels to any part of the drive.
Inspection. After you are familiar with the handling precautions
listed above, inspect the drive. If it appears to be damaged, call
your distributor or dealer immediately.
Maintenance and repair. Seagate drives do not require main-
tenance.Thehead/discassemblyissealed;ifyoubreaktheseal,
you void the warranty. Seagate customer service centers are the
Marathon 420sl Installation Guide, August 1995 1

only facilities authorized to repair Seagate drives. Seagate does
not sanction any third-party repair facilities.
Warranty. See your authorized Seagate distributor or dealer.
Configuring the drive
1. Put on a grounded wrist strap. Wear the grounded wrist
strap throughout the installation procedure.
2. Installmaster/slavejumpers.Ina two-drive system, youneed
to designate one drive as the master, or drive 0, and the other
driveastheslave,ordrive1.Todothis,installthemaster/slave
jumpers as shown in Figure 1. In a one-drive system, configure
the drive as a master (no jumpers installed).
Alternatively, you can configure the drive as a master or
slave using the cable select option. Cable selection re-
quires a special daisy-chain cable that grounds pin 28
(CSEL) on one of its two drive connectors. If you attach the
drive to the grounded CSEL connector, it becomes a mas-
ter. If you attach the drive to the ungrounded CSEL con-
nector, it becomes a slave. To use this option, the host
system and both drives must support cable select, andboth
drives must be configured for cable select. To configure a
Marathon 420sl for cable select, install both master/slave
jumpers, as shown in Figure 1.
Attaching cables
This driveis designed for a host computer that supplies interface
signals and +5V power through a single 44-pin connector and
cable. If your computer has a fixed connector that attaches
directly to the drive, skip aheadto the following section, “Mount-
ing the drive.” Otherwise, attach the interface/power cable
as described on page 4.
2 Marathon 420sl Installation Guide, August 1995

Master/slave
configuration
jumpers
Pin 1 Pin 20 removed
for keying Circuit board
B D
A C
Drive is master; slave may be detected using DASP– signal
Drive is master; Seagate slave drive present
Drive is slave; Seagate master drive present
Use CSEL pin grounding to differentiate master from slave

Figure 1. ATA interface connector and master/slave
configuration jumpers
Marathon 420sl Installation Guide, August 1995 3

1. Turn off the computer and remove the battery.
2. Put on a grounded wrist strap.
3. Open your computer case. See your system manual for
instructions.
Caution. Opening the case may void your computer’swarranty.
4. Connect the 44-pin interface/power cable. Match pin 1 of
the cable to pin 1 of the interface connectors on the drive and
on the computer. Pin 1 is usually denoted by a stripe along
one edge of the cable. The location of pin 1 on the drive
interface connector is shown in Figure 1 on page 3. The cable
should be no longer than 18 inches (0.457 meters).
Caution. The printed-circuit cables used in laptop computers
are very delicate. Be careful not to tear them.
Mounting the drive
Mount the drive securely in the computer using M3X0.5 metric
screws in the four bottom mounting holes or the four side mounting
holes. You can mount the drive in any orientation. Be careful not to
strain or crimp the interface/power cable.
Caution. To prevent damage to the drive:
•Be careful not to bend the drive connector pins, especially
when plugging the drive into a fixed connector.
•Use mounting screws of the correct size and length.
•Gently tighten the mounting screws—do not apply more than
3 inch-pounds of torque.
•Do not insert mounting screws more than 0.15 inch.
Note. This drive meets industry-standard MCC mountingspeci-
fications. When installing this drive in a fixed-mounting
4 Marathon 420sl Installation Guide, August 1995

application, you must use MCC-compatible connectors
and mounting hardware. If the mounting holes in your
computer do not line up with the mounting holes on the
drive, your computer may not be MCC-compatible.
Configuring your computer
Before your computer can recognize anew drive,you must enter
basic information about the drive into the computer’s long-term
memory (usually a battery-powered CMOS chip). The com-
puter’s basic input/output system(BIOS) uses this information to
control the flow of data to and from the drive.
Note. Some newer computers can automatically determine your
drive type andconfigurethemselves appropriately at startup.
Read your system manual to determine whether this applies
to your computer. If so, then skip ahead to “Formatting and
partitioning the drive,” on page 8.
If your computer cannot automatically determineyour drive type,
you must run a system setup program to specify the number of
cylinders, heads and sectors for each drive in your system. This
procedure is described on the following page. The table below
listscylinder, headandsectorinformationfortheMarathon420sl.
No. cylinders 988
No. read/write heads 16
No. sectors per track 52
Total no. sectors 822,016
Bytes per sector 512
Capacity (Mbytes):
BIOS calculated 400
Usable 420
Marathon 420sl Installation Guide, August 1995 5

To enter these drive specifications into your systemBIOS, follow
these steps:
1. Turn on your computer.
2. Run the system setup program. This program configures
the system BIOS to recognize your drive. In some computers
you run the system setup program by pressing special keys
while the computer is booting up. In other computers, you can
run the program from the DOS prompt. See your system
manual for more information.
3. Enter your drive specifications. Within the system setup
program, there are three possible ways that you can enter
your drive’s specifications. These are listed below in order of
increasing complexity.
•Select a predefined drive type. Most system setup pro-
grams provide a long list of predefined drive types. Select a
drive type with specifications that match those of your drive
(refer to the table on page 5).
•Specify a
custom or user-defined drive type. If the
system setup program doesn’t list a predefined drive type
that matches your drive specifications, you may be able to
define a custom or user-defined drive type. You can then
enter your drive specifications (from the table on page 5).
When you enter drive specifications for a custom or user-
defined drive type, the setup program should display a
drive capacity less than or equal to the
BIOS calculated
capacity
in the table onpage 5. This value is slightly lower
than the usable drive capacity.
•Allow your drive to emulate or
translate one of the
predefined drive types. If none of the predefined drive
types exactly matches your drive, and your system setup
6 Marathon 420sl Installation Guide, August 1995

programdoes not allow youto specify a custom drivetype,
your drive may be able to emulate one of the predefined
drive types. Select a predefined drive type that has a
capacity as close as possible to, but not greater than, the
BIOS calculated capacity of your drive (as shown in the
table on page 5).
Note. If you emulate a drive type with a lower storage capacity
than your drive, you limit the effective capacity of your
drive. For example, a 350-Mbyte drive emulating a
300-Mbyte drive will be limited to 300 Mbytes of storage
capacity.
If you are not sure which drive type to select, try running
the FINDTYPE.EXE utility program. This program is avail-
able from Seagate’s Technical Support services (on the
SeaBOARDcomputerbulletinboard).FindTypecompares
your drive’s geometry with all geometries supported by
your computer’s BIOS. FindType can also determine
whetheranexactmatchexistsbetweenthedrivegeometry
and the system BIOS. If there is no match, FindType
selectstheclosestdrivetypesupportedbyyourcomputer’s
BIOS.
Thesystemsetupprogrammayrequestinformation onthe
drive’s write precomp or landing zone. However, you do
not need to enter any values, since your Seagate drive
does not use these parameters.
Caution. Write down the drive type that you have selected and
any drive specifications that you have entered. Keep
this information in a safe place. You will have to
re-enter this data if your CMOS battery fails.
Marathon 420sl Installation Guide, August 1995 7

Formatting and partitioning the drive
Caution. Formatting or partitioning a drive that contains data
maydestroy alldata onthedrive. Before repartitioning
or reformatting a drive that contains data, make sure
all data on that drive has been safely backed up.
Seagate Technology assumes noliability for lost data.
Low-level formatting
Seagate ATA Interface drives are low-level formatted at the
factory and do not require additional low-level formatting before
use.
Note. If you are installing only a single drive in your computer,
youcanuse theDOSprogramSETUP.EXE(suppliedwith
MS-DOS 5.0 and above) to partitionand formatthe drive.
See your DOS manual for details. After you successfully
run SETUP.EXE, your drive will be readyto use, and you
can skip the partitioning and formatting steps below.
Partitioning
The partitioning process subdivides a single disc drive into
partitions that behave as separate logical drives (labeled C, D,
E, etc.). You can also set up the entire disc as a single partition.
1. Restart your computer. Boot up the computer using a
diskette that contains DOS system files.
2. Run the FDISK program. Insert a DOS program diskette
containing the FDISK program into your diskette drive. At the
DOS prompt, type fdisk and press ENTER. Then follow the
directions on the screen to create one or more partitions. See
yourDOSmanualfordetails.Ifyouarepartitioningadrivethat
will be used to boot the computer, make sure that the primary
partition is marked active.
8 Marathon 420sl Installation Guide, August 1995