replacing hard drive

Pull the fixed bay optical drive, reboot, and check the BIOS screen again, because they share some resources and a bad CD/DVD in the fixed bay can sometimes disable both devices. If the hard drive is still not recognized, odds are the hard drive is shot. Test the hard drive on another system to be sure, or just replace it. When replacing the primary system drive, look for the connector pin adapter on the back of the old drive and swap it to the new drive before installing it.

 

The I8100 should have no problem with a primary system drive of capacities up to 120GB.

 

Seagate offers a five year warranty for their Momentus line of notebook drives, and is recommended if you decide to go with a 5400RPM drive, but I believe the Hitachi 7k100 series is recommended for notebook drives in the 7200RPM category. ZipZoomFly is a good source.

 

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductList.jsp?ThirdCategoryCode=011006&SortBy=B&Brand=HITACHI

 

GM

thanks so much but how do i get to optical drive and pull it out. i also have same problem with my latitude C600/D500. i can get up to 7200rpm on this drive as well as 120bg, when i asked dell support he told me this could only go up to 60gb 5400 rpm. but is this hard drive ata,sata or ide. that is where i get stuck with and thansk again. i need same information for my latitude if you have the knowledge on this i would highly appreciate it. thanks so much

The Dell manuals include a section on adding and replacing parts, and that includes instructions for removing the optical drive. The manuals can be handy for a variety of things, so here's a link.

http://support.dell.com/support/index.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=gen

For removal of the optical drive, just loosen the screw underneath the tab and then pull the tab out, which then pulls out the optical drive.

 

The drive is IDE/EIDE, and ATA/PATA, not SATA, which has recently become available in notebook drives. Dell doesn't provide accurate information regarding the maximum capacity with which a notebook is compatible, only what they have tested and offer as a replacement. The 60GB figure you were given is misleading at best. The Intel Application Accelerator might allow compatibility with even larger drive capacity, but 120GB is right up there for notebook disk drives. The rotational speed (RPM) does not impact compatibility.

 

I'm not familiar with the Latitude C600/D500, nor the C600/C500 if that was what you meant. That model's design is just slightly older than the design of the I8100, and it probably also works fine with drives to 120GB, at least when the notebook is updated with the latest BIOS.

 

GM

thanks i tried that . hard drive is still not being recognized. thanks for all of your help. i will replace it asap.

have a great day