XPS T550 system disk upgrade

Hrroi, although the later BIOS versions with the XPS T model will support an 80 gig drive, a control card will offer better performance in data transfer speeds.  Since the motherboard controller on the XPS T model is only ATA-33, a controller card will allow you take advantage of the ATA-100 speed the new drive has to offer.  Another side benefit of the controller card is the additional IDE ports that will allow you to add 4 more IDE drives to your system for a total of 8 drives.

As for installation, there is no need to disable your primary motherboard controller.  In fact what I would do is after the card is installed I would separate my existing CD drives and put each on their own motherboard controller IDE port.  This will offer some added performance if you do frequent data transfers between the two CD drives.  For the separating you will probably have to purchase an additional ribbon cable.  If the CD drives are the originals that came with the system then there is no performance benefit of putting them on the controller card.

The installation of the card is a simple matter of just plugging it in.  The installation will use the existing screw in the system to securely mount it and the ribbon cable from your present hard drive should work.  Just double check to make sure the present ribbon cable is an 80 conductor style.  In other words you should be able to count 80 wires in the cable. 

Back in the days when the XPS T model was new it was frequently recommended to put the controller card in the first PCI slot in order to eliminate installation problems with IRQ assignments.  This is because there is sort of a pecking order in the way IRQs are assigned to the hardware installed in the PCI slots.  The card doesn't necessary have to be installed in the first slot, just the first one in line.  On my XPS T I have left the first PCI slot empty for added air circulation around the graphics card and have the controller card in the second PCI slot.  After the card is installed and the hard drive is attached Windows should prompt you into installing the necessary drivers when the system is booted up. 

If you want the hard drive activity light to show when the new hard drive on the controller card is active you will have to run a two wire cable between the SCSI connector (J8J1) on the motherboard to pins #1 & #2 on the controller card.  Click here for a diagram of your motherboard and its connectors.  At one time Dell use to sell the two wire cable, but I suspect they don't anymore.  Some people have used a small two wire audio cable to make the connection.  On my system I used an old cable I got out of a junked CD drive.  With the cable installed if the hard drive activity light doesn't work, just switch the cable end around on pins #1 & #2 on the controller card. 

Other than that the card's installation on the XPS T model is a fairly easy and straight forward project to do.