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Maximum Hard Drive Size

post #1 of 11
5/7/09 at 4:34pm
Thread Starter 
Hi all, I have an Inspiron 700m and the hard drive finally died. I saw a few posts on what type of hard drive to get, but does anyone know what's the maximum size I can use?
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post #2 of 11
5/7/09 at 4:48pm
I venture to say 120gigo

cheers ...
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post #3 of 11
5/7/09 at 5:01pm
Thread Starter 
Heh, sounds fine by me. Now that I think of it, there really shouldn't be any issues with the capacity of the hdd, should there?
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post #4 of 11
5/7/09 at 5:20pm
What do you mean by "issues"?

cheers ...
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post #5 of 11
5/7/09 at 5:24pm
Thread Starter 
What I mean by issues, for instance, would be the system not recognizing a hard drive with such a large capacity. But I think that's moot.
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post #6 of 11
5/7/09 at 5:41pm
I believe that your comp would recognize 120-130gigo with no issue. I am not sure it will be smooth with anything larger than that though.

cheers ...
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post #7 of 11
5/7/09 at 8:01pm
If the 700m uses SATA then there should be no limit.

If the 700m uses PATA then there will still be no limit with only one Operating System.
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post #8 of 11
5/10/09 at 5:41pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by zzpulp View Post
If the 700m uses SATA then there should be no limit.

If the 700m uses PATA then there will still be no limit with only one Operating System.
It's PATA, does that mean I won't be able to run multiple OS's? I was actually thinking about running XP and some other OS the name of which slips my mind right now.
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post #9 of 11
5/11/09 at 3:43am
If it's PATA then you've probably have a BIOS limitation of 138gigs. You can still install a drive larger than this as long it's partitioned so that the second OS starts before this limit. For example, let's say you've got a 150gig drive, if you make the first partition 100gigs and the second 50gigs you can make them both bootable.

I hope this helps,
Ciao
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post #10 of 11
5/11/09 at 3:51am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tiburon666 View Post
If it's PATA then you've probably have a BIOS limitation of 138gigs. You can still install a drive larger than this as long it's partitioned so that the second OS starts before this limit. For example, let's say you've got a 150gig drive, if you make the first partition 100gigs and the second 50gigs you can make them both bootable.

I hope this helps,
Ciao
Got it, thanks very much!
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post #11 of 11
12/17/09 at 9:02am

Maximum known IDE ATA HD size

I know this post is quite late to the thread but still relivant since other people will find it like I did.
Western Digital now makes a very large PATA internal notebook drive for those of us with PATA or non SATA compatable notebooks. Its maximum size is up to 320GB
for PATA computers that means we need to Partition our drives so that it only has about 3 partitions of 120,100,100 as many of us arent able to have a partition greater than 137 or so. (I suggest looking this number up before you format the drive) this link is directly from WD for tech specs and such info
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=599
wd3200beve is the model name/number.
it is a:
WD Scorpio Blue
Mobile Hard Drives
320 GB, 100 MB/s, 8 MB Cache, 5400 RPM
I may come back and post about this later to tell you how I like the drive. (planning on using it first as an external then as an internal)
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