Upgrading an Inspiron 9300

Hi

I have an Inspiron 9300, it has an Intel Pentium M 1.86ghz processor and 512MB of RAM . It is quite old, got it in 2005.

After a few years, the battery life ran out so I bought a new original ($$$) battery. Sadly, it only lasted a few (2 or 3) months and the warning of battery life appeared. I thought it was a false warning, however, the laptop shuts down after 15 minutes on battery. I couldn't figure it out what really caused this at the beginning. After a while, the computer sometimes becomes so slow and I hear the hard drive making 'squeaking' noises. So I thought that the hard drive is causing the computer to become slow and it may have caused the battery to run out too early (2 years Vs 2/3 months).

Firstly, can someone suggest a good hard drive performance/error testing, just to make sure that the hard drive is causing all these problems. Also, can someone link me to a hard drive that would fit in the inspiron 9300 on ebay.

I also want to upgrade the RAM, I found this, is it ok?

Picture of RAM ( one stick)

Hard drive, 60GB Seagate momentus 5400.

 

You should be able to use any DDR2 memory, and so yes, the linked memory should work. If it actually has heatsinks as shown in the picture, it might be a tight or no fit, though...

I usually use the scanning utility in HDTune to check for bad sectors. HDTune reads SMART data, too. Any 2.5", 9.5mm IDE/PATA hard drive should work... how big of a drive do you need?

 

Ram for computer here: 2gig maximum : Computer memory upgrades for Dell Inspiron 9300 Laptop/Notebook from Crucial.com


Hard drive 137gig is the maximum the BIOS will allow safely before data corruption possibility increases for example: Western Digital WD1200BEVE Scorpio Blue Mobile Hard Drive - 120GB, ATA-100, 5400, 8MB, OEM at TigerDirect.com

 

Thanks guys, I bought the RAM from crucial.
I did the tests with hd tune, here is what I got:
http://img405.imageshack.us/i/14february20111613.png/

http://img197.imageshack.us/i/14february20111614.png/

What do you think about the short battery life, could it be the hard drive that killed the battery?

 

You should probably replace that drive I suppose... but a failing drive shouldn't kill a battery. Was this a genuine or generic battery?

 

I will do that. Just to know for future purposes, how did you come to this conclusion? was it the minimum read speed or the damaged sectors

It's a genuine battery, it's the same as this one although mines was made in Japan rather than Taiwan as the pictures shows!
I just took it out and noticed that it can be squeezed where the caution warning is written, it seems to be drained or something like that.

 

The damaged sectors are typically a bad sign. "Spiky" performance can also be indicative of the hard drive having a high reallocated sector count, even if SMART doesn't explicitly say so.

As for the battery... I'm guessing that it's just really old. Is there like any info that tells you when it was made?

 

As stated, you should replace the drive.

Given the age of the notebook, I am not surprised the battery life. My Vostro 1500 battery died after only 2 years of use. Try Ebay with a Dell OEM battery. 3rd party batteries often die quickly and getting customer support is near impossible.

 

I couldn't find any info about that, but it might be a reason. I'm not the one who went and bought it but it is a genuine dell battery. Still though, the vendor may have sold it even though it's old.

The 2nd battery I got is genuine and not a 3rd party one. The 1st one lasted same as yours. During that time, it gave a good life but then started shutting down in 5-10 minutes. The 2nd one as I've mentioned, only lasted a few months.

Thanks a lot guys, I will receive the RAM in a couple of days and I'm looking for a good/cheap hard drive