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Updating my beloved XPS!

post #1 of 19
4/12/09 at 9:54pm
Thread Starter 
Hi there, I'm a bit embarassed to bring this post to the forum as looking down the list nobody's posting about these lappies these days!

Basically, my hard drive's full of stuff I don't want to delete (or move to external), my dvd writer needs a paperweight to keep it closed up and the keyboard is like it has glue under the keys!

So, I can't afford to replace it at the moment and I still love the screen and the occasional Doom3 etc (sad I know). I've done some research here - but would appreciate some guidance on which bits to buy.

The drive - I know it's got to be PATA(?) but which drive should I aim for if any? Also, will all the PATA 2.5" drives fit, do I take the bits off the existing one to put on the new? Is there a limitation on the amount of hard drive memory the system will recognise?

The graphics card - am I right in saying that the 7800GTX is the one to aim for?

As far as the optical drive is concerned, will a blueray drive work and if so are the ones out there any good or is it all a bit hit and miss at the moment?

OK, many thanks for any guidance.
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post #2 of 19
4/12/09 at 10:37pm
What is the exact model and specs of your notebook. Will the 7800 GTX even fit?
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post #3 of 19
4/13/09 at 12:41am
His specs are in his sig. He probably has a 6800 ultra since its an XPS2 and he talks about upgrading the GPU. The performance increase of the 7800 go gtx is just not worth it compared to how much it costs ($250 - $350). Also your processor is pretty much the fastest so no reason to upgrade it either.

Compatible hard drives are here:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...889&name=ATA-6

I haven't seen a 7200 RPM PATA HD at newegg or zipzoomfly but I'm sure if you search you'll find them (if you think you need 7200 RPM). There is no limit on the capacity of the HD but there MAY be an issue if you choose to use more than one operating system.

Not sure about bluray but there are some threads here about it. Search "9300 bluray" in the dell forums
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post #4 of 19
4/15/09 at 8:20am
Thread Starter 
Many thanks for the replies, yes i have a 6800 ultra. Hard drives - I can't seem to find any with the right interface - can someone just confirm whether I should be searching for a PATA drive or ATA-6, which is the more accurate term or are they literally interchangeable, i.e. all PATA drives will be ATA-6/vice versa?

Thanks for the advice on the Graphics card, so there's no other card that it would be worthwhile looking at?

Many thanks again

EDIT: OK sorry for laziness above, having visited Wikipaedia I'm a bit more clued up on the terminlogy now, still can't find a decent drive with 200+GB and 7200rpm in the right interface though, anyone any ideas? Actually I'm even struggling to find a drive with 200gb+ let alone fast rotation.
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post #5 of 19
4/15/09 at 3:12pm
There was never a 7200 RPM PATA drive over either 120 GB or 160 GB (can't remember which). The largest PATA drive @ 5400 RPM is 250 GB or the rarer 320 GB. The names for drives include PATA, ATA-6, and Ultra ATA-100. PATA is really a term that encompasses all parallel ata drives but when you use the term today, people traditionally assume ATA-6. ATA-6 is the most accurate name to use.

You can technically upgrade your graphics card (GPU) to a 7800 GTX but chances are the seller is gonna want $250+ which just isn't worth it considering the real world gains you will (or rather won't) get by using it. An overclocked 6800 ultra can approach the stock 7800 GTX but if you want a long lifespan for your GPU then OC'ing is not the best route to take. At any rate, current games are gonna be limited by your CPU more so than your GPU. No way to upgrade that though.
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post #6 of 19
4/16/09 at 4:13pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Aero View Post
Hi there, I'm a bit embarassed to bring this post to the forum as looking down the list nobody's posting about these lappies these days!

Basically, my hard drive's full of stuff I don't want to delete (or move to external), my dvd writer needs a paperweight to keep it closed up and the keyboard is like it has glue under the keys!

So, I can't afford to replace it at the moment and I still love the screen and the occasional Doom3 etc (sad I know). I've done some research here - but would appreciate some guidance on which bits to buy.

The drive - I know it's got to be PATA(?) but which drive should I aim for if any? Also, will all the PATA 2.5" drives fit, do I take the bits off the existing one to put on the new? Is there a limitation on the amount of hard drive memory the system will recognise?

The graphics card - am I right in saying that the 7800GTX is the one to aim for?

As far as the optical drive is concerned, will a blueray drive work and if so are the ones out there any good or is it all a bit hit and miss at the moment?

OK, many thanks for any guidance.
First, let's set you straight on BlueRay.... not a good idea and waste of money for you. Your current video card (6800U) or upgrade (7800GTX), and your single core CPU doesn't properly support it. The only way to do BlueRay on a system like yours is to use a 3rd party software like anyDVD to rip it and get rid of the insipid protection crap, and it will still make your system crawl to a standstill. So replacing your optical drive with one BlueRay capable doesn't make too much sense. Instead just get a replacement for what you've got so you don't have to use the paperweight to keep it closed. They're relatively inexpensive.

Next, PATA is the same as ATA, Ultra ATA-33, Ultra ATA-66, Ultra ATA-100, Ultra ATA-133, ATA-3, ATA-4, ATA-5, or ATA-6 or IDE, they're all just proprietary names for the same type of drive architecture with the numbers just indicating the maximum theoretical transfer speed. As long as the drive you buy fits a standard notebook 2.5" format with one of the above mentioned nomenclatures you should be good to go.

As mentioned, spending the big bucks required to get a 7800GTX isn't worth the comparably small increase in performance. Figure that whatever you can sell your 6800U for is going to be at least $100-200 less than what it's going to cost you for a 7800GTX. That's if you can find one (they're becoming harder and rarer to find) and sell yours for a decent price (demand for your old one is declining rapidly). You're better off limiting your upgrading to a larger hard drive and saving money for a newer better system down the road.

I hope this helps,

Ciao
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post #7 of 19
4/16/09 at 4:29pm
I agree with Tiburon666, you might as well just save them pennies, and as for your hard drive, the only two things you need to know are ATA and SATA, just learn to recognize what the 2 different connectors look like.
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post #8 of 19
4/28/09 at 7:46pm
Thread Starter 
Basically I just wanted to thank you all for your input on this thread. Your replies make a lot of sense and have been really useful. I've decided to upgrade my hard drive for something bigger and get a new DVD drive but I'll leave it at that when done.

I'll be looking up how to best go about upgrading the hard drive on the net, but if anyone here has any tips it'd be greatly received.

Thanks again to zzpulp, Tiburon666 and dg5032
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post #9 of 19
4/29/09 at 5:45pm
The process of upgrading a hard drive is usually either (1) or (2):
(1) Start from scratch
(2) Use software to image your old hard drive and restore the image on the new hard drive

I just wanted to mention that you could potentially get a much larger hard drive. You would just have to sacrifice your optical drive. There are secondary SATA caddies you can buy and install SATA hard drives into (goes where your cd/dvd drive is). You say you want bluray though so this may not be an option you're willing to take.
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post #10 of 19
6/29/09 at 5:40pm
Thread Starter 
Hope you don't mind me resurrecting my thread here,

So, I cleaned out the XPS and she's running like new (silent and much faster!)
Next, I bought a 320gb hard drive, it's Western Digital, this is where I'm having some problems and could do with some advice.

I bought a USB2 caddy and have copied my original drive across using DriveImage XML. I marked the new drive as active using Window Disk Management.Then I swapped the drive into the XPS, but I can't get it to boot using the drive. I see A05 BIOS doesn't recognise more than 137GB, will this cause the problem? Do I have to do anything else? At the moment I am re-copying the drive across, just in case it got corrupted somehow last time.

Many thanks.
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post #11 of 19
6/29/09 at 5:46pm
If the comp is being limited to see no more than 137gb then yes, it is an issue.

You can try partition the drive paying attention not to blow out the boot sector of the OS on the drive. I recommend using GPart Live CD for this.

cheers ...
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post #12 of 19
6/29/09 at 6:45pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
If the comp is being limited to see no more than 137gb then yes, it is an issue.

You can try partition the drive paying attention not to blow out the boot sector of the OS on the drive. I recommend using GPart Live CD for this.
Hi there, th8anks for your reply. I have read that it doesn't matter that the BIOS only recognises 137GB, as long as you are running XP SP1 or later, as that will still recognise bigger drives. I just wanted to see if anyone here could confirm that is correct. Where is the boot sector of the drive? Maybe that is what has gone wrong.

Cheers
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post #13 of 19
6/29/09 at 6:46pm
OS allows you to see the whole drive, but if BIOS locks it out, you will never get into OS to begin with

cheers ...
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post #14 of 19
6/29/09 at 8:02pm
Thread Starter 
Having done some more reading it must be something to do with the boot.ini file, it still points to the old drive, thought the cloning software had fixed that but it doesn't look like it......

Not sure how to fix it, anyone know?
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post #15 of 19
7/3/09 at 9:50pm
The max you can put in a Gen2 XPS is 120GB 5400rpm or 100GB 7200rpm PATA hard drive. I have tried with 250GB and 160GB HD by cloning, but it is not reliable. It will work for a while and then all of sudden you won't be able to boot up. Not worth the risk.

You can upgrade the video card to Nvidia GeForce Go 7800 GTX. Cost about 250.00+
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post #16 of 19
7/3/09 at 10:39pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by eKit View Post
The max you can put in a Gen2 XPS is 120GB 5400rpm or 100GB 7200rpm PATA hard drive. I have tried with 250GB and 160GB HD by cloning, but it is not reliable. It will work for a while and then all of sudden you won't be able to boot up. Not worth the risk.

You can upgrade the video card to Nvidia GeForce Go 7800 GTX. Cost about 250.00+
Oh Christ! Well I've fitted the WD 320GB drive now, as soon as I used a decent bit of software to do the cloning it went like a dream. I've left windows set up in a small 60GB partition, maybe that'll help. Looks like I'm going to have to back up regularly and cross my fingers. Thanks for the advice, any idea what caused your start up failures?
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post #17 of 19
7/4/09 at 4:42am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Aero View Post
Oh Christ! Well I've fitted the WD 320GB drive now, as soon as I used a decent bit of software to do the cloning it went like a dream. I've left windows set up in a small 60GB partition, maybe that'll help. Looks like I'm going to have to back up regularly and cross my fingers. Thanks for the advice, any idea what caused your start up failures?
Not sure why it stopped, but I think it has to do with the BIOS only recognizing 137GB. A new BIOS is needed for larger drive, but Dell probably will not do it. The WD 250GB worked for a about a month and the WD 160GB lasted about 2 month. I did not try partitioning, I just went back to 100GB 7200rpm HD to be safe.
When it stopped booting up, the files are still in the hard drive. It just wont boot.
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post #18 of 19
7/9/09 at 8:59pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by eKit View Post
The max you can put in a Gen2 XPS is 120GB 5400rpm or 100GB 7200rpm PATA hard drive. I have tried with 250GB and 160GB HD by cloning, but it is not reliable. It will work for a while and then all of sudden you won't be able to boot up. Not worth the risk.

You can upgrade the video card to Nvidia GeForce Go 7800 GTX. Cost about 250.00+
The XPS Gen2/M170 will run drives up to 137gigs without partitioning with no problems. If the drive you're using is over that amount just partition the boot drive to below this threshold and it should run reliably. In the past I've used cloning software and/or drive manufacturer provided software to overcome BIOS limitations on other machines and have never had problems. So I'm surprised to read about your issues.

As a side note, I'm running a later model Inspiron 9300S with SATA and the XPS Gen2/M170 BIOS so I can run my 7800GTX. The BIOS doesn't correctly identify any drive I install since the XPS BIOS never supported SATA. I run my 200gig drive as 1 partition without problems for over a year. The computer Gods must be looking out for me.

I hope this helps.

Ciao
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post #19 of 19
7/9/09 at 10:07pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tiburon666 View Post
The XPS Gen2/M170 will run drives up to 137gigs without partitioning with no problems. If the drive you're using is over that amount just partition the boot drive to below this threshold and it should run reliably. In the past I've used cloning software and/or drive manufacturer provided software to overcome BIOS limitations on other machines and have never had problems. So I'm surprised to read about your issues.

As a side note, I'm running a later model Inspiron 9300S with SATA and the XPS Gen2/M170 BIOS so I can run my 7800GTX. The BIOS doesn't correctly identify any drive I install since the XPS BIOS never supported SATA. I run my 200gig drive as 1 partition without problems for over a year. The computer Gods must be looking out for me.

I hope this helps.

Ciao
The issues I had was because I used 250GB in one partition. I did not try it in mulltiple partition. It did work for a while.

I'll try with multiple partition and see what happens. I need the space.
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