Compatible hard drive for Inspiron 9300

Question

As a precautionary measure I'd like to replace the hard drive on my 6+ year old Inspiron 9300. The machine came with a Hitachi 60 Gig 7200 RPM model # HTS726060M9AT00. I'm only interested in replacing the present hard drive with another 7200 RPM.

From what I can gather by reading other posts my choices are limited. One contributing factor is the BIOS for an Inspiron 9300 can't handle any thing greater than 120 Gig hard drive. I also read that some of the later 9300s came with a SATA interface but that was the rare exception and I don't think my machine has that interface. After sorting through the alphabet soup of hard drive acronyms my conclusion is my machine needs what would be considered an older generation of hard drive by today's standards. I think the acronyms that indicate whether or not a hard drive will work in my machine are are "ATA-6", "ATA/100", "PATA", "ATA/IDE", "ATA/ATAPI-6".

I'm finding only two hard drives that seem to fit these requirements. The original drive, i.e. another 60 Gig Hatachi HTS726060M9AT00, or the 100 Gig version of the same drive, model HTS721010G9AT00. Before buying the 100Gig drive I'd just like to confirm that I really don't have any other choices.

Thank you.

ejn63 · Accepted Answer

You are indeed limited to 120G or smaller EIDE drives - and I would not buy a 100G 7200 rpm unit now, as it will be over five years old (even if it's listed as brand-new). That's about the time when manufacturers stopped making 7200 rpm EIDE drives.

There are now 5400 rpm drives that are overall faster than older 7200 rpm drives - and which are quieter and draw less power. Bear in mind, too, that used or not, hard drives have a 5-year design life -- so, you'll be buying a non-warranted drive that's beyond its expiration date before you even start using it.

The (far more expensive) option is to use a parallel ATA SSD - that will be faster than either hard drive choice, but overall, the reliability/economics factor favors buying a current, 120 G EIDE drive. You can, in fact, use a larger drive - up to about 320G, or as large as EIDE drives are made, as long as you install Windows to a 120G partition on the drive (and it must be the first partition on the drive).

Doing that - limiting Windows to the first 120G - will make a 5400 rpm drive beat out a 7200 in performance, and net you the rest of the drive to use for storage.

One example:http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136345

JoeT2008 · Answer

Thanks for that answer.  I'm now wondering how to go about performing the upgrade.  I have Norton Ghost 9.0 and Partition Magic 8.0.  I'm guessing that the sequence for the upgrade will go something like 1) making a backup image of the existing drive to a USB external hard drive 2) pulling out the old drive from the laptop and plugging in the new drive 3) booting from the Partition Magic CD and creating a 120 Gig first partition on the new drive and 4) booting from the Ghost CD and copying the backup image to the new drive's 120 Gig partition.  This last step will only work if Ghost will recognize an external USB drive.   Does this sound like a viable way to go about doing the upgrade?  Thank you.

ejn63 · Answer

You can only clone selectively - DO NOT attempt to clone the master boot record or the Media Direct partition. You CAN clone the C: partition but you'll then need to manually write a boot sector when you're done.

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Compatible hard drive for Inspiron 9300

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