| Product: Quantum Fireball CR 6.4GB w/ DiskGo! software |
Company: Quantum |
| Web: www.quantum.com |
Phone: 888-449-5656 |
| Platform: DOS/Windows/NT |
SRP: N/A
Street Price: US$108 |
Cred Rating: | Special Award: |
[Editor's Note: Caution -- Deep Geekspeak Ahead. Street Tech's rocket scientist-in-residence Larry Smilg wrote the following piece on installing a new Quantum hard drive for our Shop Talk DIY review contest. If the thought of popping the hood on your PC and assaulting it with a screwdriver makes your forehead sweat, this might be a review to skip. For more adventuresome wireheads, we thought the following would give you some idea of what to expect when replacing a hard drive. And since Larry was one of the few people who submitted a review for our contest, we wanted to say: "Thanks, Lar!" Mister Smilg wins $50 damn dollars for his trouble, proving once again that it pays to participate on Shop Talk. - Gareth]
As every computer user knows, hardware quickly becomes obsolete. The problem: My once cavernous 1.08 and 1.2GB hard drives were too small. Solution: a new drive. I chose the 6.4GB Quantum Fireball CR based on the reviews I'd seen and the fact that it was available for US$108 at a local computer show. The Fireball CR supports the latest IDE interface format: ATA/66.
The drive was an OEM version with nothing but the hardware in an anti-static bag. At Quantum's website, I downloaded DiskGo! v2.50, which was supposed to assist in installing the hardware and transferring data from the old to the new drive. I also downloaded an ATA/66 disable utility, which is required for users with older motherboards (that'd be me).
Upon running DiskGo!, you're presented with three options: Add a Drive, Partition and Advanced. Add a Drive is used to set up for a new drive. Partition is basically a graphical interface for FDISK (DOS-based partitioning program) and Advanced allows you to view the current drive configuration in detail.
After selecting Add a Drive, you're shown the current IDE device configuration and asked to select the type of drive being added. The list contains all models in the Quantum line. Once the device is selected, a drag and drop interface is used to select the desired configuration of drives after installation. When that's complete, DiskGo! shows figures of the jumper settings for all hard drives (including the old ones) and lists instructions on what to do and when. These can be printed out. One gripe: The program did
not allow me to move the CD-ROM because CD-ROM jumper settings are not in the database. I did it anyway at the end of the process and had no trouble.
I shut down and connected my new hard drive as a secondary master, with the CD-ROM as slave, and left the two old drives as primary master & slave. Problem: I was short one power connector, so I pulled it from my CD-ROM. Upon reboot, I entered BIOS and added the new drive as AUTO, LBA Mode as suggested by DiskGo!. I noticed that my BIOS reported the new drive as running in CHS
Mode 0 (instead of LBA Mode 4) on reboot. I remembered the ATA/66 disable utility, ran it from DOS and rebooted again. BIOS reported it correctly upon reboot. Next came partitioning. DiskGo! tried to tell me I only had 4.3GB available on my 6.4GB drive. When I used that space up and tried to continue, I was given a "partition error" and no results. I tried FDISK and had similar trouble. On a hunch, I pulled the IDE cable from the unpowered CD-ROM and tried again. DiskGo! reported it correctly.
DiskGo! gives an Auto option, which makes one large partition on FAT32 systems,
and makes equal partitions smaller than 2.1GB on non-FAT32 systems. I chose the Custom option because I wanted to make two partitions that would be similar to my previous configuration with C and D hard drives, thus avoiding software reinstalls. I made the two partitions and selected the default 4K cluster size for each.
The FileCopy portion of DiskGo! copied the old C drive to the primary partition of the new drive and the D drive to the secondary partition. FileCopy runs in a DOS window, and is simple and painless. It transfers boot information if present on the original drive. After running FileCopy, the drives were
installed in the final configuration, putting the new drive as primary master and CD-ROM as primary slave. The 1.08GB drive was put as secondary master and the 1.2 GB drive was shelved (it was louder).
After setting the new drive configuration in BIOS, I had one problem: my new Quantum drive partitions were set as C and E, and my old drive was D, which bumped the CD-ROM to F. I wanted to keep the CD-ROM letter the same. Quantum provides a utility called CD-Update which claims to go through the registry and update all references from the old CD drive letter to the new one. I didn't want to try that, and Windows didn't let me change the drive letters assigned by BIOS so I went back to BIOS and disabled the 1GB drive. When I returned to Windows, the Quantum drive had C and D, the CD-ROM was E, and the 1GB drive showed up as F. An unexpected result, but a welcome one. My system was transferred successfully to the new drive, and all programs with their settings were preserved.
The Quantum Fireball CR performs beautifully. It is fast and quiet. SiSoft Sandra 98 reports the drive index to be 6600, and the reference EIDE 8.4GB drive rating is 6500. It achieves speeds of 8-9 MB/s in sequential reads and writes, and 3.5-4 MB/s for random reads and writes. This compares to a rating
of 2220 and speed of 2.5 MB/s sequential and 2 MB/s random for my old 1.08GB Seagate drive. My motherboard does not support ATA/33 or ATA/66 operation, so scores should be higher on newer computers.
A recent article by Stewart Alsop complained that it was too difficult to transfer settings and data from old computers to new ones. Despite sounding like a bad musical genre, DiskGo! is extremely useful for transferring data from an old system to a new one.
- Larry Smilg [8/4/99]
[Yet Another Editor's Note Quantum tells me that the Fireball CR drive is being discontinued. There are still some on the market, but it's being replaced by the Fireball CX. See the CX page on Quantum for more info. - Gar]
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