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Inspiron 9300 Hard Drive

post #1 of 19
5/19/08 at 1:17am
Thread Starter 
I've been looking everywhere for an answer to this question and can't find it. I have an Inspiron 9300 (old.. I know), and it still works great for everything I need it to do, except one thing. I have no storage space at all.

I've been looking at throwing in a new HD, preferably as large as possible.

The only problem is all the conflicting things I hear about these systems.

First off, I know that mine is an ATA model, not SATA. I'm definitely looking for storage space above all else. So whats the biggest drive this laptop will support? I've been looking at this one (Western Digital 250 GB 5400 RPM), but I've heard things about the bios only allowing hard drives up to a certain size.

I've also heard vague suggestions about getting around this via partitions, but I have no idea how this would work.

Help?
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post #2 of 19
5/19/08 at 1:26am
I read couple posts on NBF that it could work with 250 GB without any issues.
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post #3 of 19
5/19/08 at 1:36pm
As far as I know, 160GB is the largest you can use on a i9300. That's what I have in my system.
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post #4 of 19
5/19/08 at 1:50pm
Thread Starter 
Well thats pretty much the two conflicting opinions I've heard. If I were go with a 160, which one would be the best purchase? They all look the same to me (browing newegg).
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post #5 of 19
5/24/08 at 8:30pm
I went with the Hitachi 5400 RPM drive. Just make sure you buy the right interface.

Most i9300s are PATA drives, but some of the last ones made are SATA.
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post #6 of 19
5/24/08 at 10:01pm
Thread Starter 
I went with the 250gb. It seems to be working fine. I made a separate partition for Windows, and it recognizes all 250 gb.
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post #7 of 19
5/25/08 at 2:29am
Well since 250 GB is the largest PATA, there you have it. Now if someone asks this question about a 9300 SATA I don't know what to say. There was a reason people thought the 9300 had bios limited HD space but I can't quite recall.
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post #8 of 19
5/25/08 at 12:38pm
Thread Starter 
I'm pretty sure the BIOS only recognizes the first 137gb, but as long as you make sure all the bootfiles are in that section, it'll be fine. Windows doesn't seem to care, though.
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post #9 of 19
5/25/08 at 3:22pm
Oh ok, yeah that was it.
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post #10 of 19
5/30/08 at 5:04am
I tried to replace my 9300's hitachi 80GB with a Seagate 5400.3 160GB HDD but it cannot detect it . Anyone have any ideas on what to do? Thanks.
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post #11 of 19
6/14/08 at 12:56am
This is what my parts list reads from support.dell.com (for my i9300)

WC004HARD DRIVE..., 80G, 9.5, 7.2K, Serial ATA..., HITACHI GLOBAL STORAGE TECHNOLOGIES..., MORAGA PLUS...

Is it really a SATA drive? I've always heard the i9.3ks were PATA.
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post #12 of 19
6/15/08 at 4:22am
The later 9300's were SATA.
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post #13 of 19
6/23/08 at 9:23pm
My 9300 now has the blue screens of "unrecoverable volume error" so I'm going to replace the 100GB with a WD 160GB from Newegg, the same one Dell recommends. It is an ATA, and my 9300 was one of the last ones built, for whatever that means. Luckily, I did a full True Image backup only two weeks ago!
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post #14 of 19
9/5/08 at 9:19pm
IF I understand it correctly...

As long as you partition the drive (may need a laptop->desktop IDE adapter and a desktop to do this) down below 137GB, it theoretically should work.

Once you hook it into a tower as a "slave" drive, Partition Commander or any other partitioning utility should (again, in theory do ya. I've been thinking to do this myself, with two 100GB partitions and a third as "leftover"... OTOH, I also run 6 "Virtual CD" drives and have had enough external drives to reach "Z:" before.
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post #15 of 19
9/7/08 at 9:47pm
My 160gb worked fine without partitions aside from an issue listed below so I'd assume that partitions aren't necessary because Windows will see the full amount vs the 137 in bios, however I would still recommend doing a ~20gb Partition for Windows as the first partition and the rest in another.

Here's a problem tho if you don't use partitions.. Windows can actually move your boot files to the wrong parts of the HD so they can't be seen by the bios when trying to boot. This happened to me twice before I got smart and both partitioned and turned off boot defrag.. Anyway to stop Windows from moving the boot files do the following..

1. Start, Run, Regedit
2. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Dfrg\BootOptimizeFunction
3. Select Enable from the list on the right.
4. Right on it and select Modify.
5. Change the value to N to disable.
6. Reboot your computer.

Hopefully with this done your boot files won't be moved and Windows won't suddenly stop booting for you when you restart one day with which fixboot and fixmbr won't help.
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post #16 of 19
9/9/08 at 2:21am
I was about to make a thread like this... good stuff.

So even if you have a smaller partition (less than 137GB) for windows and programs, windows could still move the boot files to part of the drive that is unrecognized??
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post #17 of 19
9/11/09 at 7:19pm
Bumping an old thread (sorry), but I have reasons.

1. I just found this and it's very useful to me--I also have a 9300 and have started to think about a just-in-case-it-breaks drive replacement on this old beast.
I have just now bought a Samsung 160 GB drive off of newegg...

2. People with older machines should start thinking about buying the PATA laptop drives while they can, before they get far too hard to find (and expensive).
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post #18 of 19
9/11/09 at 7:49pm
I'm actually thinking about picking up a spare WD2500BEVE or two for the same reasons, putting one in an external chassis and just setting backup software to duplicate the entire drive once a week.
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post #19 of 19
9/16/09 at 1:29am
Quote:
Originally Posted by galahad05 View Post
Bumping an old thread (sorry), but I have reasons.

1. I just found this and it's very useful to me--I also have a 9300 and have started to think about a just-in-case-it-breaks drive replacement on this old beast.
I have just now bought a Samsung 160 GB drive off of newegg...

2. People with older machines should start thinking about buying the PATA laptop drives while they can, before they get far too hard to find (and expensive).
Its also a plus getting a PATA drive because you know next month, nothing better is gonna come out (in this interface). Best feeling in the world.

@above poster: I have the WD drive there and its been installed in my laptop for some time. Haven't had any problems with it but if I recall, this drive has one of the highest power usages. My battery life hasn't been affected though as this drive spins down quite a bit. It can be annoying when it does it when on AC power (only does it when idle say 30 minutes or more?) but it can probably be disabled if speed is a must.
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