Thanks enj63. I did a quick search and saw some hard drive specs including SATA II, SATA III, 7200 rpm, 8 MB cache, and 6 Gb/s. Which of these affect compatibility? Is there a maximum hard drive size for the Inspiron 1545? Finally, is my Seagate Expansion STBX2000401 also not an option because of it being USB 3.0?
Any standard 2.5" 9.5 mm or slimmer SATA notebook drive will work - any capacity or speed.
I don't know whether Seagate uses a different drive mechanism inside its external drives as WD does (but note that on many of these, the disassembly of an external drive is irreversible -- the shell is very often broken in the process).
The answer to using the drive inside the external case is no - you cannot. WD external 2.5" drives have the USB 3.0 connector as part of the drive logic board - there's no SATA connector on the drive. You will need a 2.5" SATA drive to mount inside the system.
If you could not mount the drive using Linux, chances are the drive is beyond home recovery. You can try attaching it to a working system as an external, but chances are if you need the data, you're headed for a data recovery service (and weighing the cost vs. the value of the data - figure on $600-700 as a starting point for data recovery).
scgj
4 Posts
0
May 18th, 2015 20:00
Thanks enj63. I did a quick search and saw some hard drive specs including SATA II, SATA III, 7200 rpm, 8 MB cache, and 6 Gb/s. Which of these affect compatibility? Is there a maximum hard drive size for the Inspiron 1545? Finally, is my Seagate Expansion STBX2000401 also not an option because of it being USB 3.0?
ejn63
9 Legend
•
87.5K Posts
0
May 19th, 2015 04:00
Any standard 2.5" 9.5 mm or slimmer SATA notebook drive will work - any capacity or speed.
I don't know whether Seagate uses a different drive mechanism inside its external drives as WD does (but note that on many of these, the disassembly of an external drive is irreversible -- the shell is very often broken in the process).
ejn63
9 Legend
•
87.5K Posts
0
May 18th, 2015 19:00
The answer to using the drive inside the external case is no - you cannot. WD external 2.5" drives have the USB 3.0 connector as part of the drive logic board - there's no SATA connector on the drive. You will need a 2.5" SATA drive to mount inside the system.
If you could not mount the drive using Linux, chances are the drive is beyond home recovery. You can try attaching it to a working system as an external, but chances are if you need the data, you're headed for a data recovery service (and weighing the cost vs. the value of the data - figure on $600-700 as a starting point for data recovery).
scgj
4 Posts
0
May 19th, 2015 17:00
Ok, thanks for all your help.