How thick can my Insprion replacement hard drive be?

Hi:

I have an Inspiron 8000. Both the original hard drive and its 1st replacement drive were 9.5mm thick. The 60GB replacement drive died, and I'd like to replace it with something bigger. The drive is PATA aka IDE (correct me if I'm wrong). I have looked at a drive from Western Digital, the 250GB WD2500BEVE. It is listed as .4 inches thick, which converts to 10.2mm. I don't want to risk the drive not fitting.

I did contact Dell though their live chat, and the technician was unable to give me the maximum drive thickness possible with the computer.

There is also the Hitachi 120GB TRAVELSTAR 5K160 which is 9.5mm, so I know it would fit, but it's actually more expensive than the bigger drive!

Any advice on drive thickness, as well as places to buy the bigger-GB IDE drives, would be greatly appreciated! (Shopping in the US)

edited to add: I just realized I misspelled Inspiron. It was a typo, but I feel really dumb.

 

Hi.

This forum member says the failure rate on WD 250gb , is very high!

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=4234543&postcount=6

Regards

John.

 

I recommend getting an external so you can use it with your next computer... an Inspiron 8000 is fairly old, I wouldn't suggest investing much money into it.

 

Here are a few suitable replacements.

 

Thanks to all for the replies. I'm still hoping someone can answer on max. thickness for the hard drive.

I think a hard drive for under $100 is not a waste, since I will not have the funds for a new laptop for some time (and the old drive is dead). I do have an external drive, but that's not very portable! And thanks to Hep for the heads-up about that WD drive.

Atbnet, I did not know until you posted that link, and I researched, that I could put ATA-6 into my computer. Gosh, I thought learning 2 names for my type of drive was enough to find a replacement, but it wasn't! I'd wondered why Newegg had nothing I could use (looking under PATA and IDE). It would sure be nice if it had been easier to learn this, though. Newegg doesn't list drive thicknesses, though--odd since I know I'm not the only one with that issue.

Thanks again!

 

My WD 250 GB have "cliking" in IDLE.

http://www.google.bg/search?hl=bg&q=WD+clicking&btnG=Google+търсене&=

 

I have never had a problem with any 2.5" HD not fitting in the machine.

To keep costs low OEMs don't use customized parts like HDs so you can be sure any 2.5" HD will work (as long as it is designed for the interface your laptop has which is IDE).

 

Yeah, they have a lot of names for it, ATA-6, PATA, EIDE which is dumb because it only confuses people to what they actually need. The 2.5 inch hard drive is a standard form unless you were trying to put a 2.5 inch SAS drive in your notebook.

 

There's something else you need to check; older laptops have a 137GB limit to drive size. I think the 8000 is affected by this.

I'm fairly confident that the 8000 will take 11mm drives, but again I can't be certain.

The 8000 is definitely worth spending the money on; they're very well built and hopefully it should last a long time and be capable of any basic task.

 

Thanks again for the replies.

I think I may get a Seagate Momentus 120 GB drive, (Item#:N82E16822148130 at Newegg, but I'm not allowed to post links). It has many good reviews, and there are several mentions of this drive going into old Inspirons.

 

I like Seagate, I've been using Seagate in desktop for the past 6 years. I bought a Western Digital on Black Friday because it was cheap but I'm going to return it because I don't trust it.