Laptop Hard Drive Replacement
 

Hello chaps,

should probably have put this posting up BEFORE I persuaded a buddy to part with £100 for a 80 gig drive for his laptop but there we go hehe! It's only HIS money I'm after spending......

He has an Inspiron 4000 with a 20 gig drive and I persuaded him to upgrade to an 80 gig unit. As an after thought I'm slightly concerned the bios MIGHT not be able to recognise it. Does anyone have any thoughts as to whether I should leave the country before it arrives?

Also am I likely to have any problem reinstalling the drivers? It's only about three years old and runs on a 1Ghz processor. Currently has XP home upgrade overlaid on the original ME supplied and will be putting that arrangement back on as an OS.

:bored:

Wing Commander Fowler,

I do not see a problem with his BIOS seeing the Drive. I would look for a 7,200rpm Drive as the replacement. Last I had checked, I think the 60Gb was the sweet spot.

Hitachi 60GB 7200RPM Notebook Hard Drive, Model HTS726060M9AT00 PART# 08K0939

Specifications:

Capacity: 60GB
Average Seek Time: 10 ms
Buffer: 8MB
Rotational Speed: 7200 RPM
Interface: IDE ULTRA ATA-6
Features: 9.5mm high, 7200 RPM, 2.5-inch mobile hard disk drive
Manufacturer Warranty: 3 years

That and WinXP would give him a great Notebook. Do make sure you get his RAM up to 512Mb, since you are spending his money. :cool:

Take Care,

Richard

Yeah, the 80GB drive 'should' present no problems at all (for what its worth, I upgraded the original 6GB drive in my ageing 400MHz Dell Latitude with a 40GB model and it works fine).

However, there is no need to re-install ME from scratch again before installing the upgrade version of XP. Just install XP to start with and then at some point during the install you will be prompted to replace the XP CD with your WinME CD. XP setup should then scan the qualifying CD and tell you to replace it with the XP CD to continue the XP setup.

Oh goodoh chaps! That's great news thanx. :D

Wing Commander Fowler,

Let us know how it turns out.

Take Care,

Richard

Unit's in and recognised as you esteemed wallahs said it would. Just going through the painfully slow task of laying on the OS and all of the software yawn...... hehe!

Thanx again.

:p

Wing Commander Fowler,

Which Drive did you go with in the end?

Take Care,

Richard

Hi Richard - don't want you thinking we're not grateful for your kindly advice but as ever money talks and the guy was looking at the £ signs......

Got a Fujitsu 80Gb but only at 4200rpm for £90.

His processor is only 1 Ghz and he also only has 256 Mb of RAM. Am trying to convince him to invest in the extra RAM too and in the fullness of time......

Take care and thanx again. ;)

Wing Commander Fowler,

Fujitsu Drives for notebooks are very good. If you can talk him into the extra RAM, any multimedia will run a lot smoother on there. ;)

Take Care,

Richard