This is on an Inspiron 8500 but might be of interest for other models as well.

HDDs with more than 137 GB capacity are currently not supported by the latest available (A08) BIOS on the Inspiron 8500, a BIOS Version that supports 24-bit HDD addressing would be the solution. Does anyone have a suggestion (DELL Support included), i.e., a BIOS compatible with the Inspiron 8500 model hardware that  supports 24-bit HDD addressing? - Thank you in advance.