external hard drives

Archived from groups: comp.sys.laptops (More info?)

I have an Inspiron 3500, which still works well apart from the fact
that the hard-drive makes a constant high-pitched metallic noise. I'd
have liked to replace the HDD with a new, quiet one, but unfortunately
the i3500 only supports hard drives of up to 10Gb, and there are none
in the market.

I was wondering if I could disable the internal HDD and use an
external HDD from which to run the operating system? If so, how do I
go about doing this? (Please bear in mind that the 3500 only has one
USB 1.1, so no fast USB port).

Archived from groups: comp.sys.laptops (More info?)

"ultraquiet" <hbpl3@sussex.ac.uk> wrote in message
news:e9723e0c.0406140817.3d0cc255@posting.google.com...
> I have an Inspiron 3500, which still works well apart from the fact
> that the hard-drive makes a constant high-pitched metallic noise. I'd
> have liked to replace the HDD with a new, quiet one, but unfortunately
> the i3500 only supports hard drives of up to 10Gb, and there are none
> in the market.
>
> I was wondering if I could disable the internal HDD and use an
> external HDD from which to run the operating system? If so, how do I
> go about doing this? (Please bear in mind that the 3500 only has one
> USB 1.1, so no fast USB port).

If your laptop is old enough that it won't work with greater than a 10 GB
drive, I suspect you'll also have problems booting from an external drive,
certainly a USB one since that capability is also fairly new for most
machines. USB 1.1 would be painfully slow even if you got it to work. There
are PC Card adapters for USB 2.0 so that might work but I still think you'll
have problems booting. I'm not sure I understand the problem with using a
replacement drive larger than 10 GB. If your BIOS can accept 10 GB then
obviously the 8.4 GB IDE limit is not an issue so I would think you would
not have difficulty with IDE capacities up to the 33.8 GB limit and even
then I understand there are workarounds including BIOS updates.

Archived from groups: comp.sys.laptops (More info?)

Chris Allen <callen@efn.org> wrote:
: hbpl3@sussex.ac.uk (ultraquiet) wrote
: > I have an Inspiron 3500, which still works well apart
: > from the fact that the hard-drive makes a constant
: > high-pitched metallic noise. I'd have liked to replace
: > the HDD with a new, quiet one, but unfortunately the
: > i3500 only supports hard drives of up to 10Gb, and there
: > are none in the market.

: Normally, a BIOS limitation on drive size does not prevent
: the use of large drives - the BIOS should merely limit the
: usable space on the drive. I would try a 20 GB drive from
: either newegg.com or zipzoomfly.com. 20 GB laptop drives
: start at only $70, and if it doesn't work out for you,
: you can get much of your money back by selling it on eBay.

And if you do this and want to try to salvage the old data on your
current drive before it dies, you could get an enclosure for 2.5"
drive, plug your old drive into that, and plug the enclosure into your
USB port. Get Ghost or a similar program and make a copy of your old
drive onto the new one. Then when you install the new drive, it will
be like the old one was. Yes, USB 1.1 would be very slow, but you
could probably do it overnight - once and its done. Or, without
Ghost, you re-setup the new hard drive with recover disks and just
copy the files you need from the old drive with the enclosure. I
think you can get enclosures for about $25 now.

Andrew
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Archived from groups: comp.sys.laptops (More info?)

You'll probably want to find a copy of EZ-Drive or other such drive
manager software. Some 2.5" HD companies give it away for free in the
support section of their website.

These programs help your older system work around the limitations in HD
size imposed by obsolete BIOSs, and can let you drop in the latest 80GB
systems into most of the years old laptops you still have.

Definitely worth a try!

Archived from groups: comp.sys.laptops (More info?)

Am Montag, 14. Juni 2004 18:17 schrieb ultraquiet:

> I have an Inspiron 3500, which still works well apart from the fact
> that the hard-drive makes a constant high-pitched metallic noise. I'd
> have liked to replace the HDD with a new, quiet one, but unfortunately
> the i3500 only supports hard drives of up to 10Gb, and there are none
> in the market.

Some 10GB can be found via Google, but they are not allways cheap.

e.g.: http://www.usbdiscount.com/25lap10hardr.html

Karl-Heinz
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