Hard Drive in Dell xps m1530

i have just bought a new dell xps m1530 with 160gb 5400rpm hard drive and i would lke to upgrade it . i would like to know if you have to put the same make of hard drive in if so what is the make ??

thanks grahamw280

 

you could pull it out and read the make..., but it is not necesary for it to be the same make.

 

You don't need the same type at all.

All you need to do is buy a 2.5" Harddrive, and probably with a SATA connection (someone else please correct me if I'm wrong)

72oo

 

thanks for the advice
i found a seagate one on newegg

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148310

i dont know much about hard drives and i was wondering what
average latency is and 3.0gb/s is
and if they are good on this one

recommendations of good hard drives are welcome as this could be a bad one and i dont know much about them

 

Other than getting a faster (and potentially hotter running) 7200rpm drive, that one you've linked to is as good as any other 5400rpm make/model

It's actually better if you value the warranty period, because Seagate drives carry a 5 year warranty, vs most other manufacturer's 3 years

 

i dont want a 7200rpm as it drains battery is hotter and i dont tmove large amounts of data. thanks will probaby go for it !!!

 

when upgrading the harddrive do you have to reload vista of do anything to the bios??

 

Replacing the hard drive will require you to completely reinstall Vista.

Adding a hard drive (I'm not even sure you can have two in your laptop model) will not require a reinstall, but you will have to learn how to use Vista's disk management service. Google is your friend.

 

go for 250 GB fall sensor HD. it works awesome with this laptop.

 

So if I choose to replace, there is no point in getting a hard drive cloner then? I've heard that you need a hard drive cloner to get all the existing files off of the old hard drive.

ex. Upgrading a 250GB to 320GB.

Based on what your saying, I can technically just pull out the old drive (250), stick in a new one (320), and then just reinstall Vista and Mediadirect that way?

If so, If I leave the old 250gb drive intact, does that mean after reinstalling vista on the 320GB, I can actually switch between the 250GB and 320GB drives and basically have two instances of windows running on the two separate drives?

 

New laptop 7200 RPM designs are now comparable (some may be even better) in battery consumptions with 5400rpm ones. Seagate 7200 rpm HDDs used to comsumed a lot more battery power than 5400 rpm HDDs. Now with newer versions, 7200rpm HDD from Seagate is same (or no detectable differences in power consumptions) as all other 5400rpms. WD 7200rpm HDD is an alternative to Seagate with similar power consumptions.

 

That depends. You don't need a cloning program if all you want to do is install fresh on the new drive. If you want to actually duplicate the installation of your existing drive, then yeah a disk cloning app can do that too. Keep in mind that since you can't install two drives in a M1530 you'll need to get some sort of external enclosure to mount the second drive in. You can pick up a 2 1/2 inch external USB enclosure (with an internal SATA connection) for $20 at Newegg. You can also use such an enclosure if all you want to do is manually copy data from one drive to the other.

Absolutely.

Sure. And that's actually a great way to experiment with alternate OS's. Maybe you want to try Linux, or give Vista x64 a shot. Just swap in a different hard drive and test away without putting a known good install at risk.

 

so all i have to do is put vista disk in and dell media disk in and thats it the computer back to "factory settings" but with the new hdd.????

 

Factory settings? No.

What you'd be doing is a clean install of Media Direct and Vista as described this this thread:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=157838

You'd be installing Vista from scratch, and then reinstalling all of the appropriate drivers for your hardware. It's not a "Dell System Restore" that will return your norebook to it's original factory image.

 

he is correct.

Justin C.
Dell Service Tech

 

I kinda dont want to lose the other partitions though. Is it possible to make a recovery disk on the 250GB hard drive.

Then when I reinstall windows vista and mediadirect on the 320GB hard drive, use the recovery disk that I made with the 250GB on the 320GB to restore back to factory settings?

 

ok thanks fountainhead

 

Hmmm. I don't know exactly how to approach that. (Nor am I exactly sure what you mean. ) Are you saying that you want Media Direct and a clean Vista install on the new hard drive, but you also want the Dell recovery partition that contains the factory image?

Is it the Dell factory image that you want to preserve, or just a bootable recovery partition in general. Because Acronis can create a bootable recovery partition (using your own image) for restoring without media. But maybe I'm not understanding exactly what you want.

But...so long as you make no changes to the original 250 GB, you can at least feel free to experiment with the new drive without mucking up the original.