Hard drives for a laptop built in 2003 are super hard to find! (might have to toss a good lappie in the trash)

My hard drive on my Dell Inspiron 5100 laptop crashed. Dell says that I cannot use anything bigger than a 40GB HD - if I do it won't work out. They sell only one model 40GB hard drive. And hey, it costs more than twice as much as a 160GB drive! (about $140.) Newegg's no better, they had only one 40GB hard drive for sale.

This was my first computer. This is my first experience with replacing a hard drive. I don't want to get rid of it because since it was built in 2003, Dell says I qualify for FREE LIFETIME hardware/software tech support (phone consultations, not parts replacement). I like having tech support available to me by phone 24/7/365, which is why I always renew the support contract for my desktop by paying them a $100 plus dollars every year to renew it. It's worth it, especially since Dell (and HP) offer remote access for diagnosing and troubleshooting problems.

http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/category.aspx?c=us&category_id=7296&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs&~ck=anav&p=1

 

Your inspiron 5100 will have issues with large capacity drives. It has an LBA restriction of 137Gb,
so to stay on the safe side, buy a drive which is 120Gb or less

If you install a 160gb drive, your system will "not" see the harddrive at all.

I recommend looking for a used Samsung HM080GC on ebay,
A Hitachi 7K100 series drive, or a seagate momentus 7200.1 series drive
You need to look for a 2.5" PATA drive

If you cant find one online, I have a few 2.5" PATA drives available which I could sell

K-TRON

 

On 9.2.09, Dell hardware tech Ashish said:
"At times it will support a 160gb hard drive, at times, it won't. It depends on the motherboard. It won't support 160gb because it has different condensers - it's all about the design and the circuitry of the motherboard. You have different condensers, you have different (inaudible)..., and initially, when you purchased this laptop (2003), the maximum size available was 40gb's. If you put a 160gb in it, you can: damage the hard drive, damage the motherboard, and at times, it will be hard to detect (inaudible), it can damage the memory, everything is integrated you see. 40gbs is the max. When you see the Dell logo, when you first start it up, the computer might 'hang' right there...the first screen that you get. It might freeze up right there at the Dell logo."

On 9.2.09, Dell hardware tech Muhammad, ID#105843, said:
" The maximum hard drive it will support is 40gb. If you put a 160gb drive, probably the motherboard would not support it, the computer would not detect it. Your computer was manufactured in 2003. At that time there was a different technology. So the technology was not that advanced. It would detect only 40gbs. Every model has a different hard drive. A 120gb, a 160gb... would have different (inaudible) and different capacitors and all that. So now, if you install this hard drive onto an old computer there is the possibility it would (inaudible) and it would damage the hard drive. Yes, it would damage the hard drive. And the computer would not detect the hard drive."

 

"Different capacitors and all that", yup, that's definitely the reason why larger HDDs aren't supported...

Like K-TRON said, the likely limitation on your PATA HDD is 120 GB, depending on the addressing mode that the controller is using.

 

Those Dell guys are completely wrong. I mean they are even bad at lying to the customer.
The storage controller is what determines how large of a drive which can be recognized. Unfortunately yours, has a 48 bit LBA restriction, so you need a drive less than 137gb

K-TRON

 

28-bit restriction. 48-bits would get you a very large amount of addressing space.

 

Is it possible to install a 160gb drive and partition to show two less than 137gb?
Or would there be data loss


Alex

 

That's bunk. I put a 160GB hard drive in a 733Mhz Pentium III system from 1999. Nothing broke. I could only use 137GB of the space on the drive, and the transfer rates were bottlenecked by the IDE controller. that's all.

Who trains these Dell people?

 

I would use a drive less than 137GB, that's the bottom line. I'm not sure what happens when you use a 48bit LBA drive with a 28bit LBA motherboard, but I know it either results in it not working or money being wasted.

Different capacitors...what...the...heck. That is the biggest load of bull I have ever heard.

 

http://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/PID-MX12749(ME).aspx

for Canadian's that was easy!

 

methinks we have a temporal distortion in place that is simulating April 1st.

 

On 9.2.09, DEEPAK, ID#156070, a supervisor in Dell's hardware tech support department in India, said:
"If you put a 160gb in there (a 2003 lappy) it will get detected by the system however, when we install the operating system it will not detect the hard drive. We cannot install an OS on a 160gb hard drive on this system. This system will not support beyond 40gbs."
ME:
"What would happen if we went ahead and put a 160gb in there and booted the computer up?"
DEEPAK:
"We will not be able to install the OS."
ME:
"Why?"
DEEPAK:
"Because 160gbs will not be detected by the OS. If you try to install the OS, it will...(inaudible)...the hard drive is not detected."
ME:
"Well wait a minute...are you telling me...if we put a 160 in there...it'll detect only 40 of those gigabytes and the remaining 120 gigs will not be detected...is that what you're telling me????"
DEEPAK:
"Yes"
ME:
"Hmm...I wish you would have put it that way in the first place. So what's wrong with that? Who cares? I don't know if your'e familiar with American dollars, but a 40gb hard drive costs twice as much (approx $140) than a 160gb hard drive (approximately $50). Do you get my point? I don't care about not being able to access the other 120gigs. 40gigs of storage is fine. So why not just slap the less expensive 160 in there and be done with it? Would doing that damage the computer?"
DEEPAK:
"It would not damage the computer but it will not get detected. The system is not designed for anything more than 40gbs."
ME:
"Okay, it's not designed...look...the keyword here sir, is 'hurt.' Another keyword here is 'damage.' If we put a 160 in this machine, will it damage the computer or will it hurt it?"
DEEPAK:
"No"
ME:
"Okay, so...if a person wants to save money - again, keeping in mind a 40gb hard drive costs twice as much as a 160gb hard drive - wouldn't you put the 160 in it?"
DEEPAK:
"We can only put the parts in it which are compatible. A 120gb or a 160gb is not compatible with this system."
ME:
"Look...if we put a 160 in, the computer would still be functional though, right?"
DEEPAK:
"No. We would not be able to install the operating system at all."
ME:
"But you just told me that if we put a 160 in, it would not damage the computer."
DEEPAK:
"It will not damage but it will not work. Yeah. If you put a 160 in, it will not damage the system, but it will not even function. Because you will not be able to install the OS on it. So...it's of no use."
ME:
"How do you define 'not work'? I mean, if you walk over to the computer and try to turn it on, is not going to turn on, or what? How do you define 'not work'?
DEEPAK:
"Okay, to work with the system we need to boot to Windows. So, that only happens when we install Windows on the system. And that basically gets installed on the hard drive. So, how can we work with the system when we cannot install the operating system on the hard drive?"

 

time to get something newer.

btw DELL Sucks!!!

 

I'm going to say this nicely:

Notebook review members are (in general) much more knowledgeable than Dell technicians. Many of us actually know what we are talking about and we do not read off of scripts.

 

Hmm, shame you're not in the UK. 40GB PATA drive is £35 - about $55.

 

The shame is that the link has the superior 160 Gb Samsung HM160HC for the same price as the 40gb drive


Alex

 

The OP doesn't seem interested in the advice NBR members are giving him just the opportunity to rant about his "problem"

To the OP. Read K-Tron and the others advice and get yourself a 120GB drive. Job done!

 

I think that the OP is just upset that a 40 GB drive costs more than a 160 GB drive. Even though the answer as to why this true is blatantly obvious, the OP still seems perturbed about this fact.

 

You Vee read K-Tron's advice here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=5273027#post5273027

K-Tron knows what he is talking about.

 

Hey You Vee - since you seem really interested in ignoring the good and correct advice offered to you throughout this topic in favor of trusting Dell's nonsensical explanation - I'll make you an offer.
I'll trade you TWO 40GB 2.5" PATA drives for a single 160GB. You purchase that 160GB for $50, have it shipped to me, and I'll ship you TWO 40GB drives. That way, if the drive ever fails again, you've got yet another spare! Great value, 2 drives only $25 each.
And then, I can put that 160GB drive in my Inspiron 4100, a laptop older than yours, partition the drive to be 100GB, and get a free 60GB bonus!

As it's been said again and again, your limit is 137GB.
A 120GB drive would be ideal and fully functional. Anything bigger will still work... so long as you partition it to be smaller than 137GB you will be totally fine (if you attempt to go for the full size the machine "sees" you'll have problems with data corruption).

Or you can trust the Dell reps who have no actual experience. I mean, doesn't the fact that the answer you've gotten from them, who are all in the same company even, has varied from a larger drive will break the computer to a larger drive simply won't work kind of turn you off from trusting them? Yet multiple strangers on the internet, all independent from each other (most also computer techs or enthusiasts themselves) all seemed to have the same answer...

 

I had same problem for my nc4200 hp lappy, but i brought a 160gb drive,a nd only xp does not see the full drive, if you use vista i have found it sees all the drive gb's.

 

You pay $100+ a year for that tech support?

 

Yeah, considering that laptop is like 6-7 years old, you could have paid for a brand new laptop by now.
People hang onto technology for waaaaay too long. They're making money hand over fist on you OP.

 

I know for a fact a 160gb drive will not be recognized.
It has nothing to do with the LBA restriction, the BIOS plainly cannot see it. The BIOS reads "N/A" for a harddrive.
My friend Ian had either a Inspiron 5100 or a 5150, with 2 x 256Mb Pc2100, and the Intel 2.66Ghz processor.
The HM160HC I had did not work in his system. As a second choice, I sold him my older Hitachi 7K100. It recognized all 100Gb without a problem.

K-TRON

 

Yes im sure "Deepak" from "India", who works for Dell's "customer support" knows what he is talking about....

Did he say condensers? Is that even a computer part? lol..

Take K-TRON and the other members advice, we know what we are talking about.

And please stop wasting $100 a year on the support, if you could even call it that.

 

I disagree. If a laptop is running fine for you there is no need to upgrade. I still know a guy running windows 98se. Why does he not upgrade? Because it works for him and hes does not need the newest thing to make him "feel cool about himself".

 

But still, there's no reason to be paying that much for support on a machine that is worth less than the cost of support itself.

 

I never said he had to spend the money he saved on a new PC. I'm saying the ends don't justify the means.

 

Don't u ppl ever read... the OP said that he had free lifetime technical support..... but no free repair for his laptop...

 

Did you read? It's not free, he pays $100/year for it. Albeit on his desktop, but the point is it's not money well spent.

 

For the record, and as of this writing, I haven't come to a decision. Haven't had time...

Yesterday I took a break from talking to the technicians at Dell. Calling them up consumes a lot of personal time. Calling them is a great time robber. The hold times aren't as bad as they were back when each and every call required you to wait on hold anywhere between 30 and 60 minutes before you ever got a chance to speak with them. I'm not kidding. Those numbers aren't the least bit exaggerated. Back in 2003 a caller would have to wait that long on each and every call. I repeat: every call, not just random calls. Dell eventually did a serious 180 and, depending on where you live, all but eliminated the long hold time (YMMV or: 'your mileage may vary' depending on where you're located).

Still though, calling from my area of the world the hold time might be 10 or 15 minutes on a rare, bad day. And then you have to answer numerous, redundant, idiotic questions like, "What's your name?" or "What's your email address?" or "What's your telephone number?" or "What's your service tag number?" over and over again (there's a much better way - they should issue each customer a password or a secret number just like your ATM number). Before you start the troubleshooting process or question and answer brain-pick session you've already wasted a lot of time.

And then there are the times for whatever reason you get cut off in the middle of a conversation and you're forced to call back and start the whole process over again. When that happens more than once in one day, I'm pretty sure my neighbors and the streetwalkers, bicyclists, skateboarders, joggers and roller bladers outside my window heading to the beach or going wherever they're going can hear me curse. Add up all the time spent and you realize your life is owned not by Dell but by technology on the whole. The same thing can be said about Apple, HP, ATT, Time Warner, Seagate, Belkin, Logitech, etc, etc (note: Canon is the one rare exception to all this).

Stress is another factor the customer has to deal with in a telephone conversation with a technician or customer service rep. I could write a couple of pages on the stress factor. Times have changed drastically. Seems like the only customer service issue I had to contend with were the times when I didn't my morning newspaper delivered to me - and I used to think that was a serious issue.

When it comes to technology I'm a lot smarter than some of the people in my community. The community I'm thinking of are the people who live in my apartment complex, the people who sit in the audience and fawn over every word that comes out of Oprah's mouth, the people who walk the same streets I do, sit in the stands at a high school football game, or anyone who's reading this post. I've never had to take my computer to a repair shop. And you have never seen nor will you ever see a car with a Geek Squad emblem parked in front of my door.

And then there are those who make me look like an anus when it comes to technology. Their tech IQ would be a lot higher than mine.

This issue is unresolved and I intend to resolve it soon. I'll be calling Dell back again tomorrow and in the coming days to gather a few more answers. This time around I'll be asking them pointed questions that will, hopefully, allow anyone in the same position I am to come to a final decision in dealing with something like this. For example:

Are you saying the BIOS will detect but Windows can't handle it?

Whatta ya think they'll say to that? I'll put that one to 'em - can't wait to see what they say. Can you add a question of similar caliber? If you can, post it to this thread. I will then pose it to their techs - and report back with what they said.

http://reviews.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/notebooks/0,1000000335,10003105,00.htm
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,997075,00.asp

 

I can virtually guarantee you that no matter how many Dell technicians you talk to, you will not get a right answer. Your motherboard will support up to 137GB, meaning a 120GB hard drive is ideal for you. If you don't believe us, take up Hep's offer of TWO 40GB drives in exchange for that one 160GB drive.

Long story short:

40GB hard drive WILL work.

120GB hard drive WILL work.

160GB hard drive WILL NOT work.

 

Why not just take the advice given to you on this thread, OP? Numerous knowledgeable people here have told you that a 120gb pata drive is the best drive for your system, which solves your problem of what hard drive to put in your computer. It also means you don't have to spend so much time dealing with dell support again.

If however, you just want to stump the dell techs, thats a different story...

 

How much is your time worth? If you value yourself at $50- an hour, how many 120 Gb hard drives could you have purchased?

 

Not at all. Caught in the middle - trying to clear up the ambiguity - nothing more, nothing less.

 

Moments ago my phone rang. It was Dell's Escalation Team. I was surprised. There was no arrangement. They called out of the blue. They called me. I didn't call them. When I asked him:

Are you saying the BIOS will detect the hard drive but Windows can't handle it?

I really couldn't understand the mans answer. He's an Indian from India. There's a language barrier, sometimes.

Thanks for your post

 

Well enjoy talking to Deepak and friends.

 

Is the op for real? He has been given the answer, which I can confirm as I have that exact machine sitting in my sons bedroom with a 120GB seagate HDD in it. What more can be gained by going round and round and at the same time really only mentioning how bad the Indian support is and how hard they are to understand?

Listen OP, as I detect a growing level of annoyance in this thread - the members of this board are streets ahead of the Indian Dell team, and we are not charging you or keeping you on hold for 30-60 minutes.

I will say this only once - buy any PATA 2.5" HDD, with a capacity of 120GB or less and it will work. If you have the original restore disks, feed them in one by one in the order that is recommended in the manual (or your chums over in India but don't tell them you have a 120gb, just say you are doing a restore to a new HDD). Come back to us is you have any questions ONCE you have installed the drive and it is recognized by the BIOS.

This one should work fine:-
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136130

Good luck and please, no more calling India, they don't know they are talking about and you can take that to the bank.

 

Alright.. here's the scoop. I *KNOW* this works because, by chance, I have a friend who has a Dell 5100 laptop and I recently repaired it for him (his HD went bad).

YOU CAN USE ANY HD UP TO AND PAST 250GB IN IT.

Yes, you read that right, *YOU CAN USE ANY HARD DRIVE CAPACITY YOU'D LIKE IN THE THING.*

Is there a catch? It depends. If you don't care about the extra capacity past 127GB, just create a partition 120GB in size and be done with it. The system will see it just fine and will happily ignore the rest of the space.

However... if you want to use the extra capacity, you need to partition it into two drives using Windows disk management.

The *BOOT* partition cannot exceed 127GB. There is no way around that. The BIOS just can't see past that 127GB limit on it's own and nothing short of either a BIOS update (or the method down below) will get it to see the full drive capacity. However... Windows really couldn't care less about what your system's BIOS is reporting for the disk size.

To be on the safe side, create a partition under the 127GB limit... say, 40GB. Install the OS and any critical applications you use to it. If you're using a drive imaging program, resize the partition to 40GB (or whatever size you want, so long as it's under 127GB).

Once that's done and you boot into Windows, go into disk management. As long as you are using Windows XP w/SP1 (which added support for LBA48) or greater, you should now see the unused space on the drive. Partition, format it, and give it a drive letter. The remaining space will now be useable as a "second" hard drive. No fuss, no nothing, it just works. The reason is because Windows doesn't directly use the BIOS to access your hard drives. Microsoft did away with that after Windows 98/SE/ME. This is the reason why Windows XP pre SP1 won't recognize a hard drive larger than 127GB either, it didn't have LBA48 support written into it. Ironically, this same limitation is in earlier builds of the Linux kernal too (which is why until TiVo had updated the version of Linux they use on my Series2 recorder, I couldn't put any drives in it larger than 120GB. They updated it a year or two ago and I've now got 2x250GB drives in my recorder. ).

Now... if you want to make the drive appear as one huge drive to the system, there *IS* a way to do it, but it's not going to be free and can get really messy if you ever get a virus that attacks the boot block, or you get a bad sector on the boot track.

Back in the day, hard drive manufacturers used to bundle software from Ontrak Data Services called a Dynamic Drive Overlay with their HD's that when you loaded on the drive, would reside on the boot partition and would load before the operating system would be read. Ontrack still sells the software separately, but if you happen to use a Maxtor hard drive and can locate a copy, you can use Maxtor's MaxBlast software to do the same thing. I'd suggest just buying Ontrak's software since it's up to date and will work with XP/Vista. If you decide to go this route, you can read about their software and purchase it here:

http://www.ontrackdatarecovery.com/hard-drive-software/diskmanager.aspx

(the software is $59 by the way...).

Personally, I suggest going for method #1 above. It's free and I can tell you that it does work since I've done it. He's been using it for over a year now and it works great.

 

DigiDoc, thank you for confirming that you can use a drive with a smaller partition. I knew this was the case because the LBA restriction doesn't affect the BIOS's ability to see a drive, it restricts the ability of the chipset to address the entire drive.
I was actually kind of annoyed that people were saying larger drives won't work when I knew for a fact that they would.

 

There is no substitute for first hand infomation

I very much doubt that the tech's have that , they are reading from a service manual
I ran into this before when a service manual stated that the max additional ram module size was 200pin ddr 512mb on an older laptop
The manual was dated before the availability of the 1gb modules ,and It turns out that the 1gb modules work fine


Alex

 

Digidoc, did you upgrade the BIOS in your friends inspiron 5100?
I didnt upgrade the BIOS, and that may have been why my friends 5100 or 5150 did not read the 160gb HM160HC I put in it.

K-TRON

 

Exactly! Unless the drive is using something newer than ATAPI-6 (which will most likely never exist on E-IDE, since it's being replaced by SATA), the computer will see the drive attached to it, just not the full capacity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_ATA#ATA_standards_versions.2C_transfer_rates.2C_and_features

 

I tried to update his BIOS. I forget the exact revision bios he had, but I think it was A09, which was the latest available but doesn't support HD's over 127GB. If your friend's system couldn't see the drive at all you had another problem (either jumpering or a bad drive).

For the record, the drive he gave me to put into it was a brand new Western Digital 250GB Scorpio Blue that he picked up from Best Buy ( http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=9024218&type=product&id=1218009475474)

I was going to just buy the Ontrak software for him, but then by accident I discovered that Windows itself will see the extra space on the drive and will use it as a second partition. I did some digging around and the consensus was that since Windows talks directly to the drive controller and bypasses the BIOS, it can use the full capacity of the hard drive as long as the boot partition containing the OS is valid.


Now... the obligatory disclaimer:

Just because this worked for me DOES NOT MEAN that it will work for you. Use this info at your own risk. If your dog starts barking backwards, your cat catches on fire, your house implodes, or anything else resulting from your use of this info, I'm not responsible. In other words; use at your own risk.

 

Well it looks like the OP doesn't want to listen so no point of us wasting out breath.... motion to close thread plz.

 

I agree, the OP does not seem to listen to the advice.

But it seems like other people may benefit from this thread, so for now, I'll leave it open.

 

Interesting, cause the drive I was using came out of my inspiron 8500 and it worked fine. Maybe my friends had an earlier BIOS revision. I remember putting it in there, and the drive was not being recognized.
Anyways, my friend got rid of his 5100 or 5150 about a year ago, so its not much of a problem anymore

K-TRON

 

OP are you for real? After 5 pages of advice you're still trying to call in and get your questions answered from Dell? Unbelievable... Even more unbelievable is that you're paying $100 a year to get that crappy service.

 

lol, this is funny.

@ OP who do you ask about a health issue?
Doctor or the McDonalds burger guy?


I large portion of NBR members are very highly educated, there are many poeple here who have spent years in Universtiy to study Computers in one way or another. These Dell guys are paid minimum wage to read a script. Why won't you listen?

or just trade with Hep! he's a good guy. and I know he would love to have 80GB for FREE!

 

Indeed, this thread is highly amusing.

What I'd like to know is why the OP even made the thread in the first place if he's not going to listen. I wonder how the OP would react if we all did a 180 and started agreeing w/ Dell?

Still waiting for the OP to admit that the whole thread was a joke... It is a joke, right? RIGHT?!?