Old Laptop drive, can it be replaced?

Dutch Guy · 8 Apr 2008 at 10:31

I have an old Dell Latitude C610 laptop from ~2002 but the harddrive is propably on it's way out as it couldn't find the drive yesterday.

I have taken out the drive and it is a 20GB 4200rpm drive, can I replace this drive with a 80GB 5600rpm modern drive or is it a different connection (IDE?)and or other incompatibility?

badbob · 8 Apr 2008 at 10:35

Check connection and height, some laptop drives are thicker. The biggest problem is the BIOS might not support larger hard drives, contact Dell and ask them what is the largest HD the BIOS supports.

semi-pro waster · 8 Apr 2008 at 10:44

The old rule generally used to be that you could repace a laptop with one up to 3x the size, a drive that old will be IDE. Some manufacturers provided bootstrap loaders to overcome size limits within bios but I don't know if they still do.

As badbob says you might need to check the height of the drive but I think Dell used standard drives so you ought to be able to replace it.

Dutch Guy · 8 Apr 2008 at 10:47

The drive is a IBM Travelstar 20GB 4200rpm one but I can't read the type as there is a sticker over the info but it looks like a standard drive, I will measure the height ehough but I thought that all 2.5" drives were the same dimensions?

I guess I will try to find a cheap small new harddrive, the laptop is only used for simple stuff and doesn't need a big or fast drive.

rpstewart · 8 Apr 2008 at 10:59

Dutch Guy said:
I will measure the height ehough but I thought that all 2.5" drives were the same dimensions?

In terms of length and width they are all the same but the height can vary although now pretty much everything is 9mm but I've seen older large capacity (for the time) drives that are 13mm.

Dutch Guy · 8 Apr 2008 at 11:32

The height is 9mm so I guess it is standard.

So I should look for a standard 2.5" IDE harddrive but does it have to be 4200rpm or can I also get a 5400rpm model?

rpstewart · 8 Apr 2008 at 11:42

The machine should take either.

Dutch Guy · 9 Apr 2008 at 08:58

I ordered a 40GB 2.5" Hitachi Travelstar 5K100, hopefully the machine/BIOS can work with this drive. (I did notice that prices have fallen dramatically so it was only 23 quid)

Dutch Guy · 11 Apr 2008 at 13:30

Result.....!!!!

The drive worked straight away, it was recognised in the BIOS, XP installed without a hitch and the drive is a lot quieter and faster than the old one (I should have done it sooner)