Trying to figure out what kind of hard drive I can order for my Dell Inspiron 6000??!!

The Inspiron 6000 requires a parallel ATA hard drive, also called ATA, IDE, or EIDE.  The drive should be a 2.5", 9.5 mm drive having a capacity not greater than 120 GB.

If for some reason the only drives you can find have a capacity greater than 120 GB, you can still use such a drive safely by making at least two partitions, the first being 120 GB or less, and installing your operating system on that partition.  For Windows XP (the original OS for this machine) the first partition needs to be at least 40 GB.  Once you have made the first partition and installed the OS on it you can use Disk Management in the OS to create the second partition and format it.  Use the second partition for your data.

ok thank you for the information!! Now I can decide on which hard drive to get and order one up and let you know how it goes!!!

Glad I could help.  Anymore questions, just post.

Well what I don't understand is this, when I pull the hard drive out, there is just a plug on the back, I assume that is the IDE plug. When a new hard drive comes after I buy it, is it going to have one of those plugs? Or is that a case that I have to take off the hard drive and put on the new one? This is what is confusing to me. Every article about this talks about IDE on Towers and not laptops. I can't find anyone to explain the IDE hard drive slot or whatever it's called the hard drive goes into.

Thank you

Thanks again for the info,I didn't realize how helpful this site is and I really appreciate it!! I ordered a 3.5 inch SATA drive the first time before I left my first message like an idiot!! LOL!! Now I canceled that order (thankfully they did) and re ordered a 160gb IDE hard drive. There were 76 reviews and about a third of them were people saying they worked on there Dell Inspiron perfectly and were whisper quiet and did not get warm at all. I don't plan on keeping my info off the hard drive I am currently using. I plan to put a fresh copy of windows 7 ultimate on the new one. Thank's again about the IDE connector information also, I ordered a new one (only $1.75) because I was told 3 times about being careful with the pins on the new hard drive and everyone said taking the connector off the old one could ruin it so I'm just going to put a new connector on the new hard drive because it was so cheap that way if something happens with the new hard drive god forbid I can just hook the old one back up!! I'm not paying anyone to do this stuff anymore. I've been reformatting people's laptops on the side with new OS's making extra $, now it's time I learn how to work on the hardware. Thanks again!!

Yeah, I'm going to put a fresh copy of windows 7 ultimate in. I did a fresh install on someones HP 4420s Notebook like a month ago and it was soooooo nice. It weighed like 2 lbs lol, I put in windows 7 ultimate and then downloaded all the programs it came with from the factory etc. It had voice command service!! The person who brought it to me lost the master password and I could have probably got the laptop from her for 75$!!! It was worth at least 750$ after all the software I put in it. Now I am going to finish upgrading this Dell Inspiron so I can run Windows 7 on it and not have to worry ever again about enough HD space or anything. I already maxed out the ram and installed a new dvd burner (that I got for 19$ off Amazon brand new and unsealed!) so this one should be ready to do about anything. Yeah I hate how XP makes it so you can only make 137GB partitions but it's highly unlikely I will ever use even half that anyways. It's a just in case move. My 40gb hard drive now is pretty full and it's kind of pointless to spend almost the same amount of money on a hard drive that's only 80gb compared to a bigger 160. The 160GB I ordered is a Seagate and I got it on Ebay for 32$!! Must be Friday the 13th luck!!

Thanks again!!

You are very welcome.  I quite understand your reluctance to remove the interposer from the hard drive, but bear in mind for the future that only certain models make use of that part.  Some laptops do not use them, and if you need to mount the drive in an external enclosure you will discover that the enclosure interface requires the bare hard drive pins to be available.

One other thing I didn't mention as I assumed you would be installing Windows XP Service Pack 2 or later.  The reason you can use a drive larger than 120 GB is because Windows has its own driver for the hard drive controller.  The catch is that Windows XP before any service packs were added, also had a limit of 120 GB.  That limit was removed when Service Pack 1 was released.  The bottom line is that you should be using an operating system that uses a driver having 48 bit LBA capability.  This requirement is met by any Windows version later than the original Windows XP.

You're welcome.  Don't forget that the boot partition must be under the 120 GB limit, regardless of the Windows version you are using.  All of them start up using the BIOS routines, and those are limited 120 GB permanently.