WESTERN DIGITAL

FOR JUMPER SETTINGS ON WESTERN DIGITAL DRIVES, CLICK HERE.

In the case of Western Digital, support is very good. Not only are there utilities to diagnose problems with your hard drive, but there are also utilities available that allow you to format and partition your hard drive for any Windows operating system, as well as the NTFS or FAT32 file system.

If you believe you are having problems with your hard drive, you can download the Data Lifegaurd utility. It will test for potential hard drive surface problems (e.g., bad clusters, bad sectors, partitioning/formatting problems, etc.) and drive recognition problems (e.g. hard drive that is not recognized by the operating system). Click on the title below to download the program to your computer. We recommend you save it to your desktop so it is easy to find.

Once you have downloaded it, insert a formatted floppy disk in the floppy drive, and double click on the program you just downloaded. Once it has created your bootable floppy disk, you can simply reboot your computer with the floppy disk in the drive, and the program will start automatically.

DATA LIFEGAURD HARD DRIVE DIAGNOSTIC TOOL

This diagnostic tool will only run in DOS. Do not attempt to run this program in Windows.

If you need to format and partition a hard drive and you don't want to do it the long, hard way in DOS with fdisk, then this is the tool for you. This utility allows you to take a hard drive, brand new or otherwise, and format it, as well as assign drive names, and choose your file system (NTFS or FAT32). It also has an option to do everything automatically, once you tell it the operating system you are using. Western Digital has two ways of doing this. You can either create a bootable floppy diskette, or if you are merely adding a second or subsequent drive to your existing one, you can download a version of the program that will run from within Windows.

If you choose the bootable diskette, download it to your desktop, then insert a formatted floppy disk in the floppy drive, and double click on the program you just downloaded. Once it has created your bootable floppy disk, you can boot to this disk at any time with the hard drive you wish to work on, and the program will start automatically.

If you choose the Windows version, download it to your desktop, then double click on the program you just downloaded. Follow the instructions for installing the program, and you can then configure your new hard drive through the program.

WESTERN DIGITAL HARD DRIVE INSTALLATION UTILITY - BOOTABLE FLOPPY VERSION

This installation tool will only run in DOS. Do not attempt to run this program in Windows.

WESTERN DIGITAL HARD DRIVE INSTALLATION UTILITY - WINDOWS ENVIRONMENT VERSION

This program is meant to run in windows. Once the file is downloaded, double click on it to start the program installation.