Upgrade HDD on Dell 5100 notebook

as long as the replacement drive is 9.5mm tall (it would be abnormal for it no to be) then it'll fit fine. you'll need to reinstall your OS or use a backup utility in order to keep your current OS and data. a good suggestion would be to re-install the OS on the new drive, buy a 2.5in USB enclosure for your old 30GB drive, then when your new HDD is installed, simply plug in the USB (old laptop drive) and copy all your user data to the new install.

if you do it that way, the 30GB drive doesn't go to waste, you can still use it for additional storage space.

Or... if you don't want to deal with reinstalling your OS, buy the 80GB drive, put that in a USB enclosure and it's a done deal. (you don't gain any performance for using the faster drive however)

Good luck, let us know if you have any other questions!

nope no hardware restrictions. I have taken a laptop drive out of a dell before so I can confirm that. no special cables, because it's based on the ATA-6 standard (almost exclusively used in laptops making wiring easier actually). you will be just fine...and if you have so much space already, go ahead and sell the drive on ebay.

Thanks to all for your replies. I took all advice. I purchased a 100 GB 2.5" Hitachi HDD from Newegg for < $100 including shipping.

One trick is there is an adaptor on the HDD being extracted. You can miss this at 1:00 AM or if you have a very low IQ. Take the adaptor off the old and put onto the new before inserting the new.

HDDs generally come with nothing but themselves, and that's exactly what mine came with. So backup/restore software is necessary. Fortunately, I have it -- but I did have some S/W difficulties in doing the restore onto the new 100GB HDD.

After the HDD swapout on my Dell, I was confident so I decided to put the 30GB extracted Dell HDD into the kids' older Sony Vaio -- replacing the 15GB drive in there. Getting the drive physically swapped out from the Vaio was more like an operation. This difficult physical swap made me really appreciate the Dell design.

The S/W swapout was again tricky, but I muddled through it. One purchase and I have vastly improved TWO computers. I will sell the very capable 15GB on ebay.

A giant Thank You to all posters!!!!