Putting a 100gb 5400rpm or 60gb 7200rpm drive in a Dell Inspiron 1150?

  • Thread starter Thread starter gaikokujinkyofusho
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gaikokujinkyofusho

Hi, i just got off the phone for the third time with Dell tech support.
They can be really accommodating when something dies within the
warranty but when it comes to tech knowledge they are lacking. I was
told 3 diff things by 3 diff representatives. I wanted to either put in
a 60gb 7200rpm OR 100gb 5400 drive to replace my intolerably slow/small
60gb 4500 drive. None of the answers the reps gave me told me i could
put either of these into the notebook i have, but because they were so
inconsistent i wanted to double check (or find out how i can double
check).

Does anyone know if either of those drives can fit in this model
notebook, or can anyone tell me how i can find out (without consulting
Dell).

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Cheers

-Gaiko

PS Another reason for not using Dell would be that i can find both of
those drives for a ton cheaper (almost half the price) than i can find
them on the Dell site.
 
Hi,

I've replaced drives in several laptops (not Dells). I think the main
thing you need to worry about are:

1) How difficult is it to get to (remove and install) the drive. With
some of the laptops that I upgraded, I had to almost take the whole
machine apart to get to the drive. Most modern laptops have a
compartment that is fairly easy to get to, but you should check.

2) As far as fit, I think that almost all, if not all use standard 2.5"
drives. Some older 2.5" drives were "thicker", 12.5mm height, but I
think that almost all, if not all, newer drives are 9.5mm height, and
the 9.5" drives usually will be able to replace an existing 12.5mm
drive, so I think that you should be ok.

3) Some laptops, including a Compaq R3370US that I recently upgraded,
have a connector adapter attached to the drive connector, to turn it
into a right-angle connector. If that's the case, you'll probably need
to pry the adapter off the existing drive after you remove it, and then
put the adapter onto the new drive before installing it.

Jim
 
Hi, i just got off the phone for the third time with Dell tech support.
They can be really accommodating when something dies within the
warranty but when it comes to tech knowledge they are lacking. I was
told 3 diff things by 3 diff representatives. I wanted to either put in
a 60gb 7200rpm OR 100gb 5400 drive to replace my intolerably slow/small
60gb 4500 drive. None of the answers the reps gave me told me i could
put either of these into the notebook i have, but because they were so
inconsistent i wanted to double check (or find out how i can double
check).

Does anyone know if either of those drives can fit in this model
notebook, or can anyone tell me how i can find out (without consulting
Dell).

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Cheers

-Gaiko

PS Another reason for not using Dell would be that i can find both of
those drives for a ton cheaper (almost half the price) than i can find
them on the Dell site.
Click to expand...

It's not that they are lacking knowledge, it's because Dell support is
all the way out in INDIA! The U.S. Dell employees are too busy
installing Spyware on some helpless sap's new DELL before shipping it
out to him .

My suggestion to you is make sure your next PC is a Hewlett Packard or
a Compaq.
 
Erich,
HP or Compaq??? You have to be joking!!!

I will never buy HP ever after they bought Compaq, because HP never made any good PCs AFAIK (I
used to listen to somebody complain about how often HP business machines failed who worked for
a company here in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada called Convergys that was outsourced by HP), Walter
Hewlett, the last descendant of the company's founders was kicked off the board of HP for
opposing the Compaq merger, and right after the takeover, HP *conveniently* decided to make all
business laptops incompatible with previously supported docking stations. I think the only
reason they bought Compaq, who did make some nice business PCs, was because their PCs weren't
high enough quality to be able to compete with Dell.

What amazes me about your post is that HP has become famous for offshoring their tech support
long before Dell got into it, and to this day, Dell has opened up a call centre (albeit for
business clients and not 24/7 yet) right here in Edmonton, one of our city's largest employers.

The only thing I'm not clear on is when they started to offshore, because that certainly wasn't
done back while I owned a Dimension XPS T600, a desktop that cost $3500 CAD new and was worth
$550 CAD 3 years later. It was originally purchased in September 1999.

Back to the OP's question, I would say that he should ask Dell what HDs they say are compatible
with the machine (read: which HDs they would like to sell him), and simply buy a similar HD
from another manufacturer, as the OEM doesn't matter if the connector will fit and Dell says
that a same spec HD they sell will work.

But, I ask, why doesn't the OP consider getting an external drive which is guaranteed to work,
or burning more DVDs?

Cool_X


Erich J. Schultheis, The Man with the 15 inch Cock. wrote:
SNIP
 
Back to the OP's question, I would say that he should ask Dell what HDs they say are compatible
with the machine (read: which HDs they would like to sell him), and simply buy a similar HD
from another manufacturer, as the OEM doesn't matter if the connector will fit and Dell says
that a same spec HD they sell will work.
Click to expand...


Cool_X,

I would guess that Dell support would likely tell the OP that they won't
support another manufacturer's hard drive. The same thing happened to
me when I asked HP's support about their drive connector when I was
upgrading my son's Compaq R3370US last week.

Jim
 
Hi, i just got off the phone for the third time with Dell tech support.
They can be really accommodating when something dies within the
warranty but when it comes to tech knowledge they are lacking. I was
told 3 diff things by 3 diff representatives. I wanted to either put in
a 60gb 7200rpm OR 100gb 5400 drive to replace my intolerably slow/small
60gb 4500 drive. None of the answers the reps gave me told me i could
put either of these into the notebook i have, but because they were so
inconsistent i wanted to double check (or find out how i can double
check).

Does anyone know if either of those drives can fit in this model
notebook, or can anyone tell me how i can find out (without consulting
Dell).

PS Another reason for not using Dell would be that i can find both of
those drives for a ton cheaper (almost half the price) than i can find
them on the Dell site.
Click to expand...

Yes, the RPM does not matter and if it came with 60GB it's
of an age that it should start out supporting at least to
128GB capacity if not beyond.

IMO, better to get the 7K2 RPM version, RPM seems to matter
more than size or cache on a notebook drive (presuming same
generation of technology).

As Rod noted, the one issue may be size.
 
Jim,
No, that wasn't what I was talking about! I know that Dell (and other OEMs) won't support 3rd
party components that aren't officially endorsed by that OEM, so what I was saying is that the
OP should ask Dell about what HD they'd like to sell him, find out the specs like speed and
thickness, and then buy a similar HD from another manufacturer. I'm only trying to say that if
Dell wants to sell the OP a 7200 RPM HD that's 9.5 MM thick, then the OP could go get another
drive with those specs for much cheaper, or at least verify that the drives he's already found
will work or not. Like I said, in my experience, since HDs have to follow standards for width
regardless of their OEM, then the laptop's caddy should bridge the connection. Another thing
he could do is maybe find out who manufactures his current HD and/or the one Dell would like to
sell him...

I still think that an external HD would be less expensive and less hassle, but the OP didn't
say exactly what he needed the extra space for. Back on Boxing Day, Best Buy Canada had an
Acomdata 250 GB external USB 2.0 HD for about $85 USD, down from about $190 USD, which I almost
bought due to the 55% discount. I think he contradicted himself when stating that he wanted a
faster drive when he first said he needed more space, and I can't imagine how a 5400 RPM 60 GB
HD is intolerably slow/small, he must have been previously working with 10k SCSI server drives
previously or something...

Cool_X
 
I still think that an external HD would be less expensive and less hassle, but the OP didn't
say exactly what he needed the extra space for. Back on Boxing Day, Best Buy Canada had an
Acomdata 250 GB external USB 2.0 HD for about $85 USD, down from about $190 USD, which I almost
bought due to the 55% discount. I think he contradicted himself when stating that he wanted a
faster drive when he first said he needed more space, and I can't imagine how a 5400 RPM 60 GB
HD is intolerably slow/small, he must have been previously working with 10k SCSI server drives
previously or something...

Cool_X
Click to expand...


Cool_X,

Thanks for the clarification.

BTW, I think that he meant to say that he (currently) has a 4200 RPM
60GB drive (he had a typo, where he said "4500")...

Jim
 
kony said:
Yes, the RPM does not matter and if it came with 60GB it's
of an age that it should start out supporting at least to
128GB capacity if not beyond.

IMO, better to get the 7K2 RPM version, RPM seems to matter
more than size or cache on a notebook drive (presuming same
generation of technology).

As Rod noted, the one issue may be size.
Click to expand...


kony,

Agreed...


To Gaiko,

I forgot to mention that the drive I put into my son's R3370US recently
was an 80GB 7200 RPM Hitachi (7K100) with an 8MB cache, and the laptop
(which has an AMD 64 processor) is noticeably faster with the new
drive. I'm really glad that we went with it vs. a 5400 RPM model that I
was debating about...

Jim
 
Beside fitting a new hard drive, make sure that a new drive dissipates no
more heat than the old one. Failing that you may shorten its life to just a
couple of months.
 
Beside fitting a new hard drive, make sure that a new drive dissipates no
more heat than the old one. Failing that you may shorten its life to just a
couple of months.
Click to expand...

I had this problem when I upgraded an older Inspiron Dell 5000e from a
12G 4200 rpm to a 40G 5400 rpm drive. The new drive died right at a
year, and the replacement drive died after a few more months. The
warranty drive from the first failure is in there now. Gotta love
those daily backups!

The laptop's a lot more sensitive to dust buildup than it was before
as well, and needs to be blown out once a quarter. The original HD
was working fine when I took it out after several years.
 
Not necessarily, they arent all the same thickness.
Click to expand...
Make sure you get a Laptop Drive to replace the one you got. They make
them in different thicknesses. You may find a revue somewhere telling you
how cool a specific drive runs. The manufacturer probably has some
spec's. Some drives probably run cooler than others.
 
While I don't dispute your account of what happen, you causal link
between the failure and either RPM of the drive or heat / power
dissipation is only your speculation (which is not changed by the fact
that it happened twice).

The simple fact is that it has become an unofficial standard that the
hard drive in a laptop is allocated 5 volts at 500ma, and no more
(which, conviently, is also the power limit for what you can draw from a
USB port).

That is 2.5 watts.

I have seen no modern drives that exceed 500ma, rotational speed not
withstanding (although I have some very old drives, under 1 gigabyte,
that draw 700-800ma).

Unless you can show that the power requirements (current draw) of one
drive exceeds that of another, any conclusion that the drive is dying
because IT generates more heat is bogus. However, some laptops subject
the drive itself to [much] more heat (from the laptop, not the drive)
than other laptops. And some drives may be more sensitive to heat than
other drives, rotational speed not withstanding.
 
Barry Watzman said:
While I don't dispute your account of what happen, you causal link between the
failure and either RPM of the drive or heat / power dissipation is only your
speculation (which is not changed by the fact that it happened twice).
Click to expand...

In fact the low end Dells are notorious for killing hard
drives and its clear that's a temperature problem if
you monitor the hard drive SMART temperature.

It wouldnt be at all surprising if a replacement drive that
uses more power gets hot enough to kill the drive and it
wouldnt be hard to prove that using the SMART temps.
The simple fact is that it has become an unofficial standard that the hard
drive in a laptop is allocated 5 volts at 500ma, and no more
Click to expand...

No such animal.
(which, conviently, is also the power limit for what you can draw from a USB
port).
Click to expand...

Your claim on that 'unofficial standard' is completely bogus.
That is 2.5 watts.
Click to expand...
I have seen no modern drives that exceed 500ma, rotational speed not
withstanding (although I have some very old drives, under 1 gigabyte, that
draw 700-800ma).
Click to expand...

Irrelevant to whether low end Dells which are marginal
at best with the hard drive temp do get worse with a
drive that takes more power than the original drive did.
Unless you can show that the power requirements (current draw) of one drive
exceeds that of another, any conclusion that the drive is dying because IT
generates more heat is bogus.
Click to expand...

Trivial to prove his claim using the SMART temps.
However, some laptops subject the drive itself to [much] more heat (from the
laptop, not the drive) than other laptops.
Click to expand...

Waffle. What matters hard drive death wise is the temperature of the drive.
And some drives may be more sensitive to heat than other drives, rotational
speed not withstanding.
Click to expand...

And clearly a drive which is marginal at best temperature wise
is certain to get hotter if a replacement drive uses more power.
 
Most laptop drives are 9.5mm thick. There are some that are thicker, but the
vast majority conform to the 9.5mm standard.

Not necessarily, they arent all the same thickness.
Click to expand...
Make sure you get a Laptop Drive to replace the one you got. They make
them in different thicknesses. You may find a revue somewhere telling you
how cool a specific drive runs. The manufacturer probably has some
spec's. Some drives probably run cooler than others.
 
Which drives exceed the well-known 500ma limit?
I suspect everything from the last few years is near 2.5W,
with more variation at idle based on rpm and platters.
 
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