Re: What IDE Drive for my 5 year old Dell8200

"Steve Bird" wrote

Thanks again
Is there a way to check if the Bios supports this larger drive functionality?

"Rock" wrote

"Steve Bird" wrote

Thanks John

Have never had a problem with this HDD yet so cloning it should be OK. I will image the drive first to be on the safe side.
Was just a little concerned about drive size limit but seeing as I am running XPSP2 i don't think there will be too much of a problem with say 200GB replacement.

"JohnF" wrote

"Steve Bird" wrote

Hi All

Just after some ideas on what HDD to buy to upgrade in size from my WD Caviar 60GB IDE 2MB drive I have installed.
I have had my Dell8200 running XP SP2 with P4 1.9 CPU AND 1250MB RDRAM for 5 years now without hardly a glitch but i seem to be running out of disk space fast with the kids wanting more and more on it.
I have a slave drive of 40GB also which can stay for now.

The long and short is I am looking for an IDE drive of about 160-250GB to Ghost my drive across to.
Any ideas?

I've upgraded a number of vintage (200-2002) desktop computers using Western Digital's Caviar series 7200 RPM drives. (Also, I've usually added memory). The combination of 5400-to-7400 RPM upgrade and memory upgrade has generally speeded up the system, especially boot time, and opening applications and large files.

I see newegg.com has the 160 GB IDE-ATA drives for about $62 including shipping (model WD1600JB).

I avoid hanging multiple drives on the same IDE bus. I prefer a clean software reinstall, but if you have confidence in the original drive, doing an image copy is an option..

To use drives larger than 137GB two things are needed. The BIOS has to support 48bit LBA, and XP has to be at SP1 or SP2. Most modern BIOS support 48bit LBA.

Ahh..lol, I see you put 5 yrs old in the subject. It should support 48bit LBA, but to be sure you need to contact Dell.

--
Rock [MVP - User/Shell]

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Cannot detect harddrive
    ... In my system the power supply has one ... your HDD ... I take it there's no problem with your BIOS update going awry and causing ... with two different hard drives - is that right? ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)
  • Re: XP isnt seeing my new 500gb SATA drive
    ... recognition by the motherboard's BIOS of the HDD should be ... say the HDD was detected? ... the OS doesn't detect your SATA HDD because you need to install a SATA ... Seagate's SATA-II drives have a ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware)
  • Re: HDD Compatibility
    ... and new larger drives appear in the ... BIOS Upgrades ... available expansion slot and then connecting your hard drives to it. ... than having to connect them to the controller card itself. ...
    (alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt)
  • Re: Hard Drive Activation
    ... and it has 2 hard drives. ... We'll further assume that your 40 GB HDD connected as PM boots without ... Now you say the 80 GB HDD is not detected in the BIOS. ... What about connecting that 80 GB HDD as Primary Master after ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware)
  • Re: XP Installation Failure
    ... called 48 bit LBA mode of operation for IDE interface). ... to use the latest BIOS available as one solution. ... install cannot go past the 33GB mark. ... And hopefully, also supports big drives. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)
Loading