Dell Inspiron 5150 HDD Upgrade

Hi Folks

I would like to upgrade my old faithful Inspiron 5150 40GB HDD to at least 160GB, I understand from the documentation that 160GB is as large as I can go, give that this is 4-5 years old has there been any advances so as up upgrade to large HDD, if so any recommendations

Many Thanks

Thommo

 

Welcome to notebook review,

The inspiron 5150 uses IDE/ATA/PATA harddrives.

You should look into the Samsung HM160HC. It is the fastest drive for the interface.
Here is my review of the drive:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=264209

Before you buy the drive. You need to do one thing first.
Download and install "hdtune" (version 2.55 is fine)
http://www.hdtune.com/

When you install the software, go into the "info" tab.
Tell us in there is a check in the "48-bit address" box.
If there is, your system can see 160gb drives.
If it does not have a check box, your system can only read drives up to 137Gb.
So if that is the case, you need to partition the drive into a 130Gb and a 30 gb partition in order to make use of the entire drive.

The actual drive can be bought from zipzoomfly, lagoom or newegg for about $55
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=10007684&prodlist=froogle
http://www.lagoom.com/Samsung_Spinpoint_M5_160GB_2_5/HM160HC/partinfo-id-578898.html
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152110&nm_mc=OTC-Froogle&cm_mmc=OTC-Froogle-_-Hard+Drives+-+Notebooks+/+Laptops-_-SAMSUNG-_-22152110

K-TRON

 

I second the Samsung drive. I installed it in my Inspiron 8600 circa early 2004, and that + 1.25 Gb of RAM makes that old laptop quite snappy.