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July 23rd, 2007 11:00
Dimension 4550 Hard Drive upgrade
I have a 5 year old Dell 4550 running Windows XP-SP2 with a 2.0 GHz P4 and 1GB of RAM and am in need of a recomendation for a new hard drive.
I've only got 9GB of space left on my 40GB EIDE hard drive so I figure it's time to think about adding more storage. The drive is a WD400BB 7200 with 2mb cache.
I use the system for business applications, desktop publishing, photoshop and graphic app's plus web browsing & email. I don't want to spend a lot since it probably won't be too long before I start thinking about a new system.
I've been reading reviews and forum postings and although I know more now than when I started, I'm still not quite sure of the best upgrade path to follow.
One problem with reading reviews, just as I get to the point where I think I've got the answer I'll come upon a contradictory review and without the personal experience it's hard to know what to believe.
I've narrowed my search down to a choice between a Western Digital Caviar SE EIDE 160GB or a Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 Ultra ATA/100 160GB.
Any thoughts on which is the more reliable and /or better performer?
Are there other drives I should consider?
Are these two drives compatible with my system?
A question that came up in one of the forum (on another forum) postings was..."Your BIOS in that old Dell may not recognize a new drive that big on it's own. You may have to manually set the number of heads, cylinders, etc. in your BIOS, if Dell allows you to do this."
I also noticed in another thread on this forum a question about a 137GB ceiling on a 4550.
I've only got 9GB of space left on my 40GB EIDE hard drive so I figure it's time to think about adding more storage. The drive is a WD400BB 7200 with 2mb cache.
I use the system for business applications, desktop publishing, photoshop and graphic app's plus web browsing & email. I don't want to spend a lot since it probably won't be too long before I start thinking about a new system.
I've been reading reviews and forum postings and although I know more now than when I started, I'm still not quite sure of the best upgrade path to follow.
One problem with reading reviews, just as I get to the point where I think I've got the answer I'll come upon a contradictory review and without the personal experience it's hard to know what to believe.
I've narrowed my search down to a choice between a Western Digital Caviar SE EIDE 160GB or a Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 Ultra ATA/100 160GB.
Any thoughts on which is the more reliable and /or better performer?
Are there other drives I should consider?
Are these two drives compatible with my system?
A question that came up in one of the forum (on another forum) postings was..."Your BIOS in that old Dell may not recognize a new drive that big on it's own. You may have to manually set the number of heads, cylinders, etc. in your BIOS, if Dell allows you to do this."
I also noticed in another thread on this forum a question about a 137GB ceiling on a 4550.
Is this an issue I'll have to contend with? If so how do I resolve it?
Thanks, John
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mombodog
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12.7K Posts
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July 23rd, 2007 15:00
1. Added the UDMA support for the 48-bit LBA hard drives over 137GB."
John Holscher
11 Posts
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July 23rd, 2007 16:00
shesagordie
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46K Posts
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July 23rd, 2007 19:00
Both Seagate and WDC, both make excellent hard drives, but Seagate has a five year warranty.
WDC Warranty
If you intend to perform a clean reinstall of XP on the new hard drive, because of the 137gb limit, you need either a XP-SP1 or XP-SP2 reinstallation disk, not XP with the SP upgrade.
Bev.
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