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Hard drive exchanges on system

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7 replies

by boblinde

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I have a Dell Dimension3000, and have it all set nice, except, my hard drive is only an 80 mg,,or g. I don't know. Can I change it out and put in a 750mg portable hard drve in its place? can I make the external, my c:drive? How about another way? I need help. This thing runs so good, but I am lacking for ram/

Thanks Bob

7 replies

by dumphrey

a larger one (they are measured in GB now). Another option with a desktop is to ad a second hard drive, so you could buy a 500 or 750 GB IDE drive, and install it inside along with your current HD. This is the simplest and safest solution.
Another option is to buy a large external drive that has USB connections, and just leave it plugged in. This will work but be noticeably slower then adding an internal drive.

by boblinde

If I put the 750gb inside, just how could I hook it to the drive in there?

by oh smeg

What you need to do is buy a PCI to IDE Controller and connect the 750 GIG IDE Drive to that so it can be used inside this computer.

You then can either use it with the existing HDD inside the computer being the Boot Drive or you can pull the existing drive and install Windows to the new drive. But you'll need to press the [b]F6 Key[/b] when the first blue screen appears during the Windows Install Process and have your PCI to IDE Controller Card Driver copied to the Root of a Floppy.

If this system could address a drive this big all that would be required is to plug it into the spare IDE Data Lead after making sure that the jumper on the Drive was set to CS or Cable Select. You could then boot the system and when Windows Opens you could go into the Drive Management and format the drive. Naturally you also need a spare Power Lead inside the case.

As BIOS will not be able to fully address a drive of 750 GIG Capacity if the system boots it will be reported as considerably smaller and be unreliable.

If you are planing on buying a PCI to IDE Controller Card you would be better off buying a PCI to SATA Controller Card as the SATA has a faster data transfer and the SATA Drives tend to be slightly cheaper than the IDE Drives because they are more common. Besides the PCI to SATA Controller Card you'll also need a IDE to SATA Power Adapter these cost about $4.50 and are freely available where you buy the HDD.

Col

by thumbsup2

You said in the last sentence: "This thing runs so good, but I am lacking for ram/".

Yet, you are asking questions about adding hard drive space.

RAM and hard drive space are two different things.

So, which do you need? RAM (memory) or hard drive space (data storage)?

by 1bn0

80 GB is plenty of space unles you are massively downloading and buring movies to DVD.

Save your date to the 750GB External. It will still be there when your 80 GB dies from the thrashing Windows will give it.

INSTALL MORE RAM! You said it yourself. Do it!

by oh smeg

You have a BIOS Limit on the upper Size that you can fit to this computer. According to the Dell Service Manual it originally shipped with a 40 GIG HDD and the step up to 250 GIG or bigger is just too much for this M'Board to handle.

However if you where to fit a PCI SATA Card to this system in one of the 3 PCI Slots if they are not filled up you can then fit any size drive that the Controller Card can support and that should be all of the current ones that are available.

As this system is supposed to have a Celeron CPU it would be a idea to upgrade this component and the RAN as well as fitting a PCI Video Card to do away with the on Board Video which uses the System Memory and CPU to generate Video. A Dedicated Video Processing Unit and Video RAM are always faster than using the CPU and System RAM to generate Video and will give you a better result.

You can max out this system with 2 GIG of RAM that is 2 X ! GIG Ram Sticks which are DDR RAM and a succeeded type. These are easily replaceable and freely available and would be the single most positive thing you could do to improve the speed of this system. Then fitting a Dedicated Video Card would remove the 64 MEG of RAM that the Video steals from the system and allow the Intel 865 Chip Set to run in Dual Chanel Mode which is considerably faster than Single Chanel Mode.

If you want to replace the CPU you can fit a 3 GIG P4 which is a socket 475 CPU Type from Intel and these should be available on places like E-Bay at a very reasonable price. I have yet to have a CPU Fail unless it has been overclocked or run without a Heatsink. These P$ CPU are otherwise piratically indestructible and just work smoothly without problems. Though they do get hot and need to be properly fitted tot he Heat Sink Provided by Intel.

OH if you want to look at the service Manual it's available here

http://tinyurl.com/5wwldv

I hope that is of some assistance to you.

Col

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