Replacement Drives >80GB in Extensa 6602WLMi

Hi All

My trusty Acer Extensa 6602WLMi is giving a "SMART Failure Predicted" warning at boot so it looks like I'll have to fit a new hard drive

The current drive is a WD800UE 80GB and my BIOS is 3A28.

Does anyone if there are any BIOS limitations stopping me fitting a new 120GB, 160GB or 320GB drive? I'd like to fit a new 320GB drive if possible

Thanks!

 

I'm not familiar with your laptop model but you should be able to upgrade to a bigger IDE hard drive. There are, however, possible BIOS limitation, I've no idea if the latest BIOS for your laptop will support it though. The hard drive WILL work but no idea if the BIOS will actually "see" all the space.
http://www.dewassoc.com/kbase/hard_drives/hard_drive_size_barriers.htm

The latest BIOS for your laptop appears to be 3A45(3A43 for the models with Intel graphic card) so if the upgrade doesn't work with your current BIOS version you'll have to update to the latest version.

 

Thanks ATG for your reply.

The Extensa 6602 I believe was a special model for Tesco (a supermarket chain) in the UK.

I've been doing some other research and I think the Extensa 6602 may be an the same in specifications as an Aspire 1690 series. Does anyone know of possible HHD limits on that model? I've done a lot of searches and not found anything yet.

I've already checked the registry and EnableBigLBA isn't set (actually it's not there at all despite being on XP SP2!) to let XP see past 137GB.

 

Extensa 6602 is part of the Extensa 6600 series.

I don't think the OS is the problem here, if you insert a bigger drives as long as the BIOS doesn't have a problem with it the OS will automatically install all it needs to recognize it correctly.