Inspiron 9300 Hard Drive Upgrade help

Chances are you missed the blade adapter -- transfer it from the back of the original drive to the new one, or the drive isn't connected to the system board.

For the sake of your data, yes - make sure you make a 120G partition and install Windows to it.  DO NOT use a single partition the full size of the drive or you WILL lose data.

Got the blade adapter, THANKS!! Can I store some stuff on other side of partition, or install, say, a Linus OS over there?

Thank you, greatly appreciated!!   :emotion-2:

Yes, that should work.

what is the blade adaptor?  I bought same replacement hard drive in 160 size and it doesn't see it.  got both old and new out and saw pins are different.  two levels on new one

The adapter just pulls off the original drive - no screws.  Once removed, the back of the original drive should match the new one - just put the adapter on the same way.  If the drives do not match after removing the adapter, then what you've purchased is probably a Serial ATA drive - which you cannot use.  This model uses a parallel ATA drive for all but the very last production run (of which there are very few out there).

The other thing to be sure to do is create a 120G partition on the drive for installing Windows - DO NOT try to install to a partition of 160 G or you WILL lose data at some point in the future.

  On the back of the 'old' hard drive, after you remove it, there should be a 'spacer' . I didn't happen to take notice of it either until I looked.I can't remember if there was 2 little screws holding it on or not. Hope that helps

You can request a disc here (they do charge out of warranty).

http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/dellcare/en/backupcd_form?c=us&l=en&s=gen

The reinstallation instructions are here:

http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/dsn/detectos?type=force&lx=181316&lv=336966&l7=362066

Thanks, I finally figured it out after rereading your posts and searching the internet and guessing that I had to pull something off.  Now my bad because I never made a boot disk, it didn't come with one and my only windows xp disk is for a desktop and says it is for 64 and i need 32.  how do i get a boot disk? after i get the system restored, then what?

Thank you so much.  I actually got impatient and called them.  They are going to send me the disk for free:emotion-2: Maybe because I bought the computer on their site here and have a new TV on the way?  Anyway, I am so glad I finally got the hard drive in.  I was already going to return it for a refund b/c I couldn't get it recognized without that blade adapter you folks referred to.  Now for memory upgrade.  Should I dare?  I should probably make a boot disk this time, but oh, will I need to after they send me one?  I will have to download the drivers from their site and they gave me the link.  When I put in the boot disk is that when the option comes up to partition the hard drive like you guys say, to load the boot onto the primary?  Or do I do that first?  I have an old WD life something disk I got with a desktop hard drive I installed on another puter.  If I do upgrad from my 1 gb to 2 gb memory, how will it affect my laptop? I almost think of getting new laptop but this one has been good to me over the years and was pretty pricey when I got it.

Not so sure about 120 GB being a hard and fast rule regarding maximum BIOS support. I successfully installed a 128 GB Transcend SSD in my 9300. When I boot into Setup the BIOS displays the disk drive as "128 GB HDD" so it looks like the BIOS recognizes the full size of the SSD.

I've read other posts on the Dell Community Forums where people have stated that the BIOS actually recognizes somewhere in the range of 130 to 137 or so GB, but beyond that the BIOS does not.

I made sure to disable everything related to disk defragmentation, including scheduled tasks, services, etc. I haven't had any problems so far. I installed Windows 7 Home Premium onto the SSD. The install created two partitions, a 100 MB system partition and a 119.xx GB primary partition.

So that totals 120 GB. Perhaps the partitioning and formatting uses up the missing 8 GB. Or, if there is a 120 GB limit then maybe this is how it manifested when I installed the OS. Regardless, my 9300 has been working just fine. And, the SSD's performance is vastly superior.

Though the entire thread is over six years old, and therefore of limited use to most people, 128 quoted gigabytes is really 128 billion bytes - the manufacturers quote capacity in decimal gigabytes.  The OS counts in binary, so any 128 "Gigabyte" drive is really 128 * (10^9/2^30) or 120 binary gigabytes.