Tally Password Recovery services and software

Tally is the first choice when a company wanted a powerful solution to manage its financial accounting and inventory management needs. As it deals with financial statements ot an organisation, it needs to provide some passwords to the tally files.

If the passwords of Tally get lost or forgotten by the user, Organisation has to face many hardships like delay in financial activities. We at Ekam provides professional Tally Password Recovery services to recover & unlock tally passwords of tally files.

A Tally recovery password utility has been providing easier technology to recover Tally password. But here first question comes in our mind, why we use tally in our business and organization. So answer will come in following step, because it included lots of benefits for using Tally software in our business and organization:

• Just like your complete business book
• Books, Registers and Statements of Accounts for your business.
• General Ledger for organization
• Flexible Voucher Numbering
• Date based Reporting for business and organization
• Columnar Reports
• Bank Reconciliation
• Flexible Period Accounting
• Budgeting and Control
• Ratio Analysis for any stream
• VAT Statutory Returns
• Service Tax
• Excise for Traders
• Speed in navigation
• Flexibility in adapting to your business
• Multiple Companies
• Cash Flows

It is very dangers or harmful for your business and organization if you lost your tally password where you’re placed all necessary information.

The Tally Sheet brings you information about what’s happening in the department, including faculty updates, student accomplishments, upcoming and recent events, current graduate student research, alumni news, and much more! The Tally Sheet is produced each fall and distributed to all Natural Resources alumni. In most business process data and information are used to store in computer hard drive using the software like ‘Tally’. In Tally Data are stored in encrypted form using password or authenticated form. But IT markets has been solved your problem in easy manner by launching Tally recovery password utilities.

How can I gain access to a Windows computer if I forgot the administrator's password? How can I reset the administrator's password if I forgot it?

One method of gaining access to the system is by trying hard to remember the forgotten password, or a password of another user which has the same level of administrative rights. However I don't think this approach will help you, otherwise you wouldn't be sitting here reading article, would you?)

Another method is by trying to restore a backed up System State (in Windows 2000/XP/2003) or a ERD (in NT 4.0) in which you do remember the password. The problem with doing so is that you'll probably lose all of the recently add users and groups, and all the changed passwords for all of your users since the last backup was made.

A third method might be to install a parallel operating system on a different partition on the same computer, then use a simple trick to gain access to the old system. Read more about it on my Forgot the Administrator's Password? - Alternate Logon Trick article.

Note: If you are looking for password cracking tools that can be used for miscellaneous objectives such as password-protected PDF documents, zipped archives, Office documents, BIOS protection and so on then this pages is NOT for you. See some links at the bottom of this page for hints on where to find such tools, but I can tell you right away that Google might be a better choice for you.

The fourth option is by using 3rd party tools that will enable you to reset the lost password and logon with a blank password.

EBCD – Emergency Boot CD (v0.61 - October 2004)

EBCD is a bootable CD, intended for system recovery in the case of software or hardware faults. It is able to create backup copies of normally working system and restore system to saved state. It contains the best system software ever created, properly compiled and configured for the maximum efficient use.

EBCD will be very useful when you need to:

• Copy/move files (with long names, not necessary in CP437 encoding) from/to the disk but OS which can handle them (windows, Linux...) cannot boot. In particular, you may create a backup copy of normally installed and configured Windows and later restore Windows from such backup copy. So, in the case of fault OS itself and all software and its settings can be restored in 5-10 minutes.

• Perform emergency boot of Windows NT / 2000 / XP. When the loader of this OS on the hard disk is damaged or misconfigured, you are able to load OS using another, standalone loader from this CD.

• Recover master boot record of HDD. This allows to boot OS after incorrect uninstallation of custom loader (LILO, for example), which made all OS on your PC not bootable.

• Delete, move, copy to file (image) and re-create partition from file. Image transfer over network is also supported: so you may configure one PC and then make contents of hard disks of other PCs same as contents of the hard disk of the first one.

• Change password of any user, including administrator of Windows NT/2000/XP OS. You do not need to know the old password.

• Recover deleted file, even file re-deleted from Windows Recycle Bin, and, in contrast, wipe single file or a whole disk so that it will be impossible to recover it in any way.

• Recover data from accidentally formatted disk. Sometimes it helps to recover data from the disk, damaged by a virus.

• Recover data from a floppy disk, which is not readable by OS. Format 3.5" disk for 1.7 Mb size.

Also the disk includes full set of external DOS commands, console versions of the most popular archivers/compressors.

Moreover, emergency boot CD includes minimal Linux distribution (Rescue Linux distribution) which may be very useful to a professional user.

Download links:

EBCD Pro distribution (18mb)

John the Ripper (v1.7.0.1)

John the Ripper is a fast password cracker, currently available for many flavors of Unix (11 are officially supported, not counting different architectures), DOS, Win32, BeOS, and OpenVMS. Its primary purpose is to detect weak Unix passwords. Besides several crypt(3) password hash types most commonly found on various Unix flavors, supported out of the box are Kerberos AFS and Windows NT/2000/XP LM hashes, plus several more with contributed patches.

Download links:

John the Ripper 1.7.0.1 (1.32mb)

RAIDing Windows XP: How to Install Windows XP on a RAID Array of Hard Disk Drives

INTRODUCTION. This article will show you step-by-step how to set up simple RAID configurations of hard disk drives and how to install Windows XP on them.

WHAT IS RAID?

A RAID, or Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks, is a collection of disk drives that collectively act as a single storage system. In other words, two or more hard disk drives which are grouped together and appear as a single disk drive. Or, in practice, it can also be two or more disk partitions grouped together and appear as a single partition/logical drive. A partition or volume is just that, a demarcated and contiguous section of a drive which appears like a drive--a logical drive. There are six levels of RAID and the features of more than one level can combined in a RAID. The Highpoint HPT37x series of RAID controllers discussed in this article supports three common flavors of RAID used in PCs:

• Stripping (RAID Level 0). Provides performance (not redundant as implied in the acronym). Data is evenly spread over identical drives. That is, parts of file can be spread over more than one drive. Data can be read and written in parallel. Performance is very good. Failure of any one disk in the array results in data loss. This kind of RAID would be good for storing large files of temporary nature, but you sure wouldn't want to put you accounting package on one.

• Mirroring (RAID level 1). Provides redundancy. Two drives duplicate each other identically. If one drive fails, all of the data is available on the other one. The read performance of mirrored drives can be increased through load balancing and elevator sorting (I won't go into elevator sorting here). Simply put, when data is requested it is read from the least busy drive. Put that accounting package on this one; I did. But remember it is possible for Windows to "scribble" on a hard disk. In this arrangement, a scribble on one drive is more than likely a "scribble" on both drives--mirrored garbage is garbage.

• Striping/Mirroring (RAID 0+1 or 0/1). Provides performance and redundancy. Two sets of stripped drives (four drives in the case of the HP37x controllers) are mirrored. This arrangement may be fast and redundant, but it is also expensive and complicated.
  
• JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Disks). Is not really a RAID in the sense that it provides the data protection and/or higher performance. But, rather, it simply combines multiple drives into a single volume with larger capacity that can span the drives. The multiple drives look like one drive to the operating system.

This article covers the installation of the first two RAID configurations and leaves the other two as an exercise for the reader.

EXAMPLE SYSTEM

Our example system for this article has a Abit KX7-333R DDR Athlon Motherboard and was built using the instructions in How to Build a Computer with an AMD Socket A Athlon or Duron Processor and augmented How to Install the Abit KX7-333/KX7-333R Motherboard.

The KX7-333R motherboard has a built-in Highpoint HPT372 RAID controller chip. The HPT37x series of RAID controllers are covered in more detail in our guide to the Highpoint HPT370 ATA/100 RAID Controller Chip. Two 80 Mbyte Western Digital Special Edition Caviar ATA/100 hard disk drives were used for the RAID configurations. In general, the procedures used in this article are applicable to other hard disk drives and to many other motherboards with RAID controllers, as well as to RAID controller expansion boards.

Windows XP Professional was installed. Other versions of Windows XP, including the upgrade version, will work fine. The upgrade version can be installed on a bare RAID configuration if you have a CD from and older version of Windows 98, etc. available for it to check during the installation.

HARDWARE CONFIGURATION

Please use care when handling hard disk drives.

Both drives used in this article were left at their factory jumper configurations, chip select (CSEL) for this installation. Setting one drive as a Master and the other as a Slave (use dual drive settings) will also work.

The drives were installed in an Antec SX840 case and connected to the two motherboard RAID IDE interface connectors (the yellow ones) with two 80-conductor ATA/66/100 IDE hard disk cables. See Install the Drives for the basic procedures used for installing hard disk drives. The red stripe on the cables goes to pin 1 of the RAID connectors on the motherboard and on drives. The stripe is blue on some cables I've seen. On this mother board Pin 1 is towards the front of the board. On the drives Pin 1 is adjacent to the power connector. The connector at the very end of the end of the cable with two connectors plugs into the drive. It is usually black and may be marked Master. The connector at the other end of the cable plugs into the motherboard. It is usually blue and may be marked System. The unused connector is usually gray and may be marked Slave. The gray connectors would be used for the two additional drives used in a RAID 0/1 configuration. Only the two bottom drives in the above picture were connected for this article. It is important that the drives are kept cool to the touch. The Antec SX840 case does that even with three drives stacked one above the other as shown.

1. BACKUP AND PROTECT YOUR DATA. If you have anything valuable on any drives in the computer, please take the time to back them up or make absolutely sure the drives with data are not connected.

2. DOWNLOAD THE RAID CONTROLLER DRIVER. Windows XP may already have a driver for your particular RAID controller and it may or may not work. Windows XP does have a driver for the Highpoint HPT372 RAID controller, but after installing windows XP the first time, we ran into problems with it. So, we downloaded and installed vesion 2.34 of the driver from Abit's web site and it works fine.

Highpoint's web site states: The BIOS updates posted on this site are only suitable for use with PCI card Host Adapters, not motherboard/HPT3xx chipset combinations. Please visit the motherboard manufacturer's website for the proper download.

3. Expand the drv234.exe file by double-clicking it and copy the resulting driver folders and files to a floppy disk.

Ways to Copy the Contents of One Hard Disk Drive to Another

This article will show you how to configure your old and new hard disk drives and describe four methods used to copy the contents of the old one to the new one.

• Copy an Image of the Drive (or Partition)
• Selective Directory/File Backup, Clean Install, Restore
• Use a Backup Program
• Directly Copy All of the Directories and Files

Protect Your Data. Before doing anything major to a hard disk drive be sure to backup your data and follow the Rules for Working With Hard Disk Drives and Safeguarding Data.

Setting-up the Drives. A hard disk does not have be mounted in a computer case to copy stuff to and from it. Be sure the power cord is pulled, and simply set it on top of the case up-side-down so the printed circuit board is not shorted and plug in the cables A shop computer in a desktop case is shown in the picture to the right. Lay a tower down on its right side and set the drive on top of the left side. Be sure to put something such as a foam rubber pad under the right side of the case to protect it from scratches from loose screws. etc. that have a way of accumulating on workbench tops.

If your motherboard has two IDE interfaces, image and data transfers will go much faster if the two drives are set as Masters, the default setting for almost all new hard disk drives (with no Slave present ), and connecting each to one of the interfaces for the transfer. That is, temporarily disconnect the CD-ROM and connect the hard disk drive in its place on the secondary IDE interface. However, do not leave the drive on the secondary with the CD-ROM if you are going to use the drive frequently. A CD-ROM can slow-down a hard disk drive.

One would normally make a new drive the Master, especially if it is a 7,200 RPM drive and the old drive is 5,400 RPM. Not only is it faster, the new drive should be more reliable and last longer than the old one. I usually put the old drive on same cable as the Master and jumper it as a Slave. If you want to use the new drive as slave, remove the old drive, set the new drive as a Master, and prep it with a Startup floppy using fdisk and format per our How to articles. When done, jumper and connect it as a slave. Disconnecting the old drive helps avoid the mistake of prep’ing the wrong drive/partition.

1. Copy an Image of the Drive (or Partition). A hard disk may have one or more partitions. If you just have a C: drive, files are stored on it in a single partition. Copying an image of a hard disk partition copies the raw data, the 0's and 1's stored on the partition. This is done with an image copying utility such as:

• Acronis OSSelector

• Norton's Ghost

• Paragon’s Partition Manager

• PowerQuest's Partition Magic

• GNU Parted

• Other image copying programs available from various download web sites such as download.com

EZ Drive in Maxtor's MaxBlast Plus II Utilities and Western Digital Data Lifeguard Tools are capable of doing a simple image transfer.

2. Selective Directory/File Backup, Clean Install, Restore. Copy application data, user data in Windows, and reinstall Windows and applications. I usually do this to my hard disk about once every six months, or when it gets very unreliable from installing and uninstalling software and hardware on too many times. Use the Windows Explorer to copy everything that isn't "junk" except the Windows directory/folder and reinstall all applications, etc. Then make a Windows folder on the destination and selectively copy subdirectories/folder and files with user data from the Windows folder to the destination (to the backup). These include, but may not be limited to:

• Internet favorites
• Cookies
• Password files (they end in .pwl)
• Mailboxes and other application data in the Windows directory
• Netscape
• ISP Dial-up Network Connection Settings

If you are doing this procedure for a clean install and it involves wiping the disk clean, it is a good idea to make a backup with MS Backup, which comes with Windows 9x/Me, on a scratch drive or network file server in case you forget something.

Some applications keep data in the their corresponding subdirectories in the Program Files folder; e.g., Quick Books Pro accounting in the Intuit subfolder. You may therefore want to make a folder Program Files, appropriate subfolders, and copy the data over.

3. Use a Backup Program. There was a time when we followed Microsoft's recommendations for moving a Windows-based hard disk to a new hard disk drive. We would use Microsoft Backup, which comes with Windows, and backup the drive over the network to one of our file servers or to a scratch drive, installed an abbreviated version of Windows on the new drive, and do a restore. This often resulted in Windows registry problems when Windows merged the old registry with the new one. As disk drives, programs, and data got larger it also became very time consuming and error prone. Other backup programs worked better, but the size of the backups were a real problem. Tape drives were even slower and the tapes were often unreliable. Backups are still valuable in cases where the original drive fails, but for moving data from one good drive to another the image copy method is the best choice.

4. Directly Copy All of the Directories and Files. In the old days of MS-DOS operating system, Windows 3.x, and Windows for Work Groups 3.x, one used the the DOS xcopy command and it worked quite well. The command is:

a:\> xcopy c:\*.* d:\*.* s/h/e/v

The flags copy subdirectories and their contents, hidden and system files, empty directories, and verifies the data. In this example, the command is issued from a boot floppy. There are other variations of the command. The C: drive is the existing drive and the D: drive is a newly formatted drive that has had the DOS system files transferred to it so that it is bootable. Prior to formatting the D: drive, if it is new, it has to be partitioned with the DOS fdisk command to create a Primary DOS partition and any desired extended DOS Partitions (and logical drives D:, E:, etc. assigned). The Primary DOS partition has to be made active. More on this later... To format the Primary partition and move the system files in one operation, use:

A:\>format C: /s

Or format it without the /s flag and use,

A:\>sys C:

to move the system files to it.

All versions of Windows 95 and 98 eliminated the capability of using xcopy to reliably copying the Windows directory (folder) and system files from one hard disk drive to another. The DOS version of the xcopy command could no longer copy system files. When run from a DOS Window in Windows (running in the Normal Mode), the xcopy (xcopy32) command could copy system files, but since some files are in use while Windows is running and cannot be copied, this procedure does not work.

Nick Rage sent me the following via E-Mail on11/20/02. His procedure uses xcopy32 in a DOS window in Windows 9x running in the Safe Mode. I tried it with a clean install of the Windows 98 Upgrade and it worked! I did not have to SYS the drive and did not use the /s flag when formatting it. Where he says, "7. Get a dos prompt box..." he means open a DOS Window in Windows running in the Safe Mode.

Here's one method that I have used with great success over the years to copy one hard disk to another. If possible.. 1. Make windows startup disk using the feature found in Control Panel - Add\Remove - Startup Disk, and set it aside, you'll need it. 2. Clean up temp files and other extraneous stuff ie.. Temporary internet files, history, cookies, windows\temp folder, etc.. 3. Turn off virtual memory and disable screensaver and power management functions. Steps 2 & 3 aren't strictly required.. but works for me. 4. Shut down system and connect new(?) drive. Connect as master on secondary ide if possible. You may have to disconnect CDROM. 5. Insert Startup Disk in floppy drive. Start up PC. Make any necessary changes to CMOS setup (autodetect drives usually works best). Make sure floppy drive is 1st in boot sequence. Exit setup. Continue boot from floppy. Partition new drive. Reboot. Format new drive. 6. Remove startup disk and reboot system into safe mode. 7. Get a dos prompt box. (I know, I KNOW!!..Windows will bark and mutter about corrupt video or some such, go ahead it's OK.) Maybe this is a good place for disclaimers!! 8. Get to c: prompt. 9. Now to the good stuff..the command that has worked for me hundreds (yes, I've done it quite a bit!) of time IS... xcopy32 c:\*.* d:\*.* /s /e /r /v /k /f /c /h We even made it easy to remember.. SERVe Kentucky Fried Chicken Hot! Also this assumes 2 drives with 1 partition each. Adjust recipe to suit. But you get the idea. I'm sending this info as a note to the attached article (very well presented i might add). I'm just sharing something from my experiences that might help someone over a hump.

I still think copying an image is a better procedure as files in some applications may cause problems, etc.; however, this procedure may get the job done in a pinch.

I thought I saw an error when it was copying. To make a log, the screen output can probably be redirected to a file by using something like:

xcopy32 c:\*.* d:\*.* /s /e /r /v /k /f /c /h > c:\log.txt

I haven't tried that yet.

Windows Me changed the xcopy command so that it can copy hidden and system files from a DOS prompt using a Windows Me Startup floppy. Microsoft Knowledge Base Article Q289483, Switches That You Can Use with Xcopy and Xcopy32 Commands, states:

In Windows Millennium Edition (Me) only, an /h switch is added to the xcopy and the xcopy32 commands. This switch copies hidden and system files in MS-DOS mode. However, the Xcopy files are not automatically included on the Windows Me boot disk.

One does not use the SYS command for Windows Me like previous versions of DOS and Windows. It is not available from the DOS prompt. However, xcopy will copy the system files and thereby make the hard disk bootable. I found that various combinations of flags listed in the Knowledge Base article would not work together as they should. The following command does work as far as copying the system files:

a:\> xcopy c:\*.* d:\*.* s/e/h

The v flag is not available in the Win Me version of xcopy.

As stated in the Knowledge Base article, xcopy is not part of a Standard Win Me Startup floppy. It can be copied to a Windows Me Startup floppy from a hard disk that has Windows Me installed with the Windows Explorer or:

A:\>copy c:\windows\command\xcopy*.*

This copies three files: xcopy.exe, xcopy32.exe, and xcopy.mod (xcopy.exe calls xcopy32.exe).

I attempted to copy the file in the primary partition on my hard disk to a newly formatted hard disk using this procedure. It took a whole afternoon and didn't work. The primary partition was about four GBytes and had about 9,345 files after I aborted a couple of xcopy attempts and cleaned-up the disk some discovered by watching the process how much junk in the form of unnecessary files Microsoft now puts on a hard disk when Windows operates.

If anyone can get Nick Page's procedure to work with Windows Me, I'd appreciate the details.

Seagate has a utility called FileCopy in its DiscWizard Program Suite that, "manages the transfer of data from the old drive, which becomes the slave, to the new drive, which becomes the master. Even hidden files are transferred. FileCopy also solves the logistical issue of reversing the positions when you replace a functioning, existing drive with a new drive." I have not tried it. If you run across another program that really works, I'd appreciate hearing about it.

This article assumes that the partitions and drives are not compressed. If Windows 9x/Me C: drive has only a few files on it, the drive is probably compressed and most of the files are in a compressed volume, which is often the H: drive.

Rules for Working With Hard Disk Drives and Safeguarding Data

have learned a few lessons the hard way over the many years I have been working on computers and a few of them have been very expensive. Here are my rules for working with hard disk drives and safeguarding data:

Don't work on disk drives when you are tired. In one case I lost thirteen years of work due to multiple, dumb errors made because of fatigue--wiped-out all three copies, wrote stuff on top of them, and could not recover them. Fortunately, most of the real valuable stuff was still on paper. Know when to quit.

Don't be in a hurry, lax, or take unnecessary chances. Know what you doing, think before doing it, and do it a logical sequence of steps. Try to avoid a distracting environment. Know when to stop.

Observe Antistatic Procedures. Manufacturer's pack hard disk drives in anti-static bags for reason... Many people don't realize that computer components can be damaged by static electricity and a problem may not appear until months later when a power surge completes the damage. Ideally, you should wear a grounded anti-static wrist strap when working on computer equipment, especially when handling memory and CPUs. Also, the use of grounded anti-static mats on the floor and on the workbench is a good practice. However, these items can be too expensive if you are building or upgrading just one computer. As a minimum, my advise is to make sure your body is touching the metal on the computer case when handling the CPU and memory. It would also be a good idea to work with bare feet during this critical time. Try to avoid touching drives, boards, memory, etc. with your clothes. Clothing can quite often be charged with static electricity, especially during cold-dry, Winter days. When handling a drive, try to avoid touching the printed circuit board. If a computer can't find drive after being in use for a few months, it may because the printed circuit board got zapped when the drive was installed.

Scan for viruses before working on a customer's or your friend's computer. Take the time to make sure the virus data base is up-to-date before you do it. Scan the computer and any unknown floppies that will be used on the computer. This comes from someone who has had a whole shop full of infected computers... a big shop... more than once. Disinfect before it spreads.

Back-up your data before doing anything major to a hard disk drive. Backup critical data twice and to different media/drives. Murphy's Law applies here; the minute you do not have a good backup something will go wrong and you will lose it. In one case, one of my technicians made a couple of errors and wiped-out the only copies of a module in a customized accounting program. His biggest mistake was to assume that regular backups included the programs. It took three expert man days and many dollars to recreate the module. Besides backing-up My Documents on a Windows 9X/Me computer be sure to back-up such things as:

• user data located elsewhere such as Microsoft Works documents and Intuit Quicken Pro company files
• C:\Windows\Cookies
• C:\Windows\Favorites
• C:\Windows\*.pwl (password files)
• *.dbx and *.pst files (Outlook and Outlook Express personal folders -- search for them with the Windows Explorer)
• Netscape directory/folder if you use it.

Backup now or cry later.

Don't trust tape or tape drives. Don't assume you have a good backup just because a customer regularly backs-up his or her data to tape. I have found that tape drives and tapes are notoriously unreliable, especially if they have been in use for about the same amount of time as it takes to have the first disk drive problem. Many times the tape of the last backup, and often the last two backups, were no good. And, you know, backups of garbage are exactly that... Also, I have seen many cases where a customer or batch program was not actually backing up the data or was not backing-up all of the data. Take the time to back-it-up yourself and make two of them, one them preferably on something besides tape. I usually back up to a scratch drive(s) temporarily connected to the customer's computer and/or to a network server. These methods are much faster than tape and more reliable. When it comes to backups, trust no one except yourself.

When backing-up check to see if the drive is compressed. Be sure to backup the drivers and compressed volume(s).

Record configuration data before wiping that drive. You can save a lot of time by copying or writing down data on that hard disk drive before wiping it clean. ISP configuration, the Windows Product Key, MODEM info, local network info, passwords, phone numbers, product serial numbers and activation keys, etc. Record now or work more later.

Don't wipe a drive until you have to. Don't be in a hurry to clean-up data after or during a job. If you don't have to erase backup files or old disk drives right away, keep that data around until you need the space. If you move data from an old drive to a new one and put the old drive back in the computer with the new one, there is no need to erase the data on the old drive until the customer needs the space. If something goes wrong, the data will still be there. The minute you erase old data/format a drive when you don't have to, you will need it.

Don't prep a new drive while an old drive with data is still attached. It is far too easy to make a mistake and remove a partition with data with fdisk or format the wrong drive/partition. It only takes a few seconds to disconnect both cables to the drive with data.

Do not put a drive where someone can bump into it and knock it off a workbench, etc. They will.

Do not set a drive connected to power on anything with the printed circuit board down. The minute you do something will turn it on and short-it-out. It is OK to run a drive out of the case up-side-down. All modern drives that I know of will fly up-side-down. Some real old ones (less than 100 Mbytes, as I recall) will not.

Do not over-torque a drive. Do not over-torque the screws securing a drive to a chassis. Never over-torque any screws securing any kind of drive. You can warp the frame and ruin the drive. Always use the correct screws for a given drive. They may vary with the type and manufacturer of a drive. Those supplied with various chassis vary. A screw that is too long can also ruin some drives.

Keep magnetic tools out of your shop. They shouldn't damage a hard disk drive, but they will wipe floppy disks and tapes with data, etc.

What is an IDE Hard Disk Drive?

Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE) hard disks have been around for quite a few years. Prior to these drives, hard disks were interfaced to a PC motherboard via an expansion board known as a hard disk controller. The drive did most of the mechanical stuff and performed basic electronic/servo functions; the controller told it in detail what to do. The development of the IDE hard moved most of the electronics and firmware (low-level software on a chip) from the controller to a printed circuit board on the drive itself. In the process, a buffer/cache' memory was added to the electronics to speed-up the process of reading and writing hard disk drive data. The drive got "smarter." Overall costs went down and performance went up.

A much simpler board, commonly known as an

IDE Controller, interfaced the IDE hard disk to the motherboard bus. The term IDE Controller is a misnomer. It is actually nothing more than a bus interface and an interface and connector for the IDE cable going to the drive. The actual controller is on the drive. In most cases when a computer says it has a problem with the hard disk controller, it has a problem with the electronics on the drive. Subsequently, the IDE Controller expansion board electronics and the connector for the drive cable were incorporated into most motherboards. Most of these motherboards have two IDE interfaces--a Primary and a Secondary--each of which can support two IDE devices. The term Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE) is owned by Western Digital. Other companies, such as Maxtor, Quantum, and Seagate, use the term ATA (AT Attachment). IDE and ATA are the same thing. Several standards have subsequently been developed to improve upon the IDE drive and incorporate other devices, such as CD-ROMs which can operate off the IDE interfaces: Enhanced IDE (EIDE), ATAPI (ATA Packet Interface), Ultra-ATA, etc. Today, most hard disk drives manufactured for PCs are ATA/66 drives (ATA/100 is proably around the corner). These drives use Bus Mastering and Direct Memory Access to transfer data back and forth between the disk drive and the computer memory with burst speeds up to a theoretical 66 Mega Bytes per second (MBs) without going through the processor. Older ATA/33 (Ultra DMA) drives do the same thing at 33 MBs. Many existing motherboards still have ATA/33 or even older IDE interfaces. Most ATA/66 drives will work on the older IDE interfaces, but, of course, not as fast. The other major category of disk drives use variations of the Small Computer System Interface (SCSI) and will not be covered in the first publication of this guide.

A Brief History of the Hard Disk Drive

The hard disk drive has short and fascinating history. In 24 years it evolved from a monstrosity with fifty two-foot diameter disks holding five MBytes (5,000,000 bytes) of data to today's drives measuring 3 /12 inches wide and an inch high (and smaller) holding 400 GBytes (400,000,000,000 bytes/characters). Here, then, is the short history of this marvelous device.

Before the disk drive there were drums... In 1950 Engineering Research Associates of Minneapolis built the first commercial magnetic drum storage unit for the U.S. Navy, the ERA 110. It could store one million bits of data and retrieve a word in 5 thousandths of a second.

In 1956 IBM invented the first computer disk storage system, the 305 RAMAC (Random Access Method of Accounting and Control). This system could store five MBytes. It had fifty, 24-inch diameter disks!

By 1961 IBM had invented the first disk drive with air bearing heads and in 1963 they introduced the removable disk pack drive.

In 1970 the eight inch floppy disk drive was introduced by IBM. My first floppy drives were made by Shugart who was one of the "dirty dozen" who left IBM to start their own companies. In 1981 two Shugart 8 inch floppy drives with enclosure and power supply cost me about $350.00. They were for my second computer. My first computer had no drives at all.

In 1973 IBM shipped the model 3340 Winchester sealed hard disk drive, the predecessor of all current hard disk drives. The 3340 had two spindles each with a capacity of 30 MBytes, and the term "30/30 Winchester" was thus coined.

Seagate ST4053 40 MByte 5 1/4 inch, full-height "clunker" with ST506 interface and voice coil circa 1987. My cost was $435.00.

In 1980, Seagate Technology introduced the first hard disk drive for microcomputers, the ST506. It was a full height (twice as high as most current 5 1/4" drives) 5 1/4" drive, with a stepper motor, and held 5 Mbytes. My first hard disk drive was an ST506. I cannot remember exactly how much it cost, but it plus its enclosure, etc. was well over a thousand dollars. It took me three years to fill the drive. Also, in 1980 Phillips introduced the first optical laser drive. In the early 80's, the first 5 1/4" hard disks with voice coil actuators (more on this later) started shipping in volume, but stepper motor drives continued in production into the early 1990's. In 1981, Sony shipped the first 3 1/2" floppy drives.

In 1983 Rodime made the first 3.5 inch rigid disk drive. The first CD-ROM drives were shipped in 1984, and "Grolier's Electronic Encyclopedia," followed in 1985. The 3 1/2" IDE drive started its existence as a drive on a plug-in expansion board, or "hard card." The hard card included the drive on the controller which, in turn, evolved into Integrated Device Electronics (IDE) hard disk drive, where the controller became incorporated into the printed circuit on the bottom of the hard disk drive. Quantum made the first hard card in 1985.

In 1986 the first 3 /12" hard disks with voice coil actuators were introduced by Conner in volume, but half (1.6") and full height 5 1/4" drives persisted for several years. In 1988 Conner introduced the first one inch high 3 1/2" hard disk drives. In the same year PrairieTek shipped the first 2 1/2" hard disks.

In 1997 Seagate introduced the first 7,200 RPM, Ultra ATA hard disk drive for desktop computers and in February of this year they introduced the first 15,000 RPM hard disk drive, the Cheetah X15. Milestones for IDE DMA, ATA/33, and ATA/66 drives follow:

• 1994 DMA, Mode 2 at 16.6 MB/s
• 1997 Ultra ATA/33 at 33.3 MB/s
• 1999 Ultra ATA/66 at 66.6 MB/s

6/20/00 IBM triples the capacity of the world's smallest hard disk drive. This drive holds one gigabyte on a disk which is the size of an American quarter. The world's first gigabyte-capacity disk drive, the IBM 3380, introduced in 1980, was the size of a refrigerator, weighed 550 pounds (about 250 kg), and had a price tag of $40,000.