olefin56

The 8200 does not support SATA, only IDE drives, if you wish to install a SATA HD, then a SATA PCI controller card would be needed. 

With 8200 there's no advantage to using a SATA hard drive, instead of an IDE.

Try to find an 7200rpm, IDE drive, with at least a 8mb cache.

BB means the Western Digital HD, has a 2mb cache.

Install at least a 120gb IDE HD, to use a larger than 120gb hard drive as the primary C:/, require WinXP-SP1 [or higher], not XP with the SP-1 upgrade.

Dell has no instructions for replace the 8200 primary IDE hard drive, but you can use the instructions for the Dimension 8250 for the physical installation, as they have the same chassis.

See HERE

A hint: Remember to set the HD's jumpers to 'Cable Select'.

After install the replacement, you need the reinstall XP, drivers and the applications.

Bev.

 Hi Bev,

Just got through answering your other post about my question on service tags.

I had planned to use this drive.  But it's not as large as the one you suggested. It's 7200 but doesn't have as much cache. So sounds like I need to look further.

Thanks for the link to the instructions and all your helpful suggestions. I didn't know I would be changing the jumpers to replace the existing drive.

And THANKS again for still being on the forum!

Dayton

Dayton.

Glad to have helped.

Check out the IDE hard drives HERE

It looks like the WDC 80gb IDE hard drive, in your link, is an OEM drive, not the retail boxed version.

Bev.

You are welcome, Dayton.    :emotion-2:

Bev.

Sure is a better price.

Thanks again Bev.

Dayton

Bev, I'm asking for  your opinion.

1. I tried to reinstall Windows.
After searching for previous versions of Windows, it showed the size of the drive but said it wasn't available.

2. Anytime I hit F1, I can hear the drive click.

From the above would you think, the drive is toasted completely?  And means no recovery of anything on the drive?

Thanks

Dayton

Hi, Dayton.

Guess the forum was down yesterday.     :emotion-4:

It sounds like the 'Click of Death' it would seem that the hard drive is toast, especially if it's the original drive.

To make certain, you could go to hard drive's manufacturer's support site, download their diagnostics and burn it to a floppy, then see if you run the diagnostics to check it.

To recover the files and folders, you could try this:

Install the the IDE hard drive and after reloading XP, etc, and when the PC is working to your satisfaction, install the 'old' hard drive as the secondary [Slave] and see if you can transfer the files and folders to the new HD.

You could also, buy an IDE, powered external enclosure, install the 'old' HD in it, attach it to a USB port of a working computer and see if you can transfer the data.

Do you have a policy about backing up the files and folders to other media, as a guard against hard drive failure?

Bev.

You can replace the Drive with a SATA Drive using an IDE BRIDGE.

Clunk Clunk Clunk Im dead.

A lot of time this is a Controller issue aka you swap a controller from an exact same drive model and you can read the data again.

http://www.drivesaversdatarecovery.com/

is one company that is likely to be able to recover the data.

Depends on how much $$$$$ the data is worth.

Bev,

I had alredy run the WD diagnostics, it showed SMART error... the code said replace the drive. So I felt it was lost.

Last year I purchases a 750 GB external drive for backups. But for the last month had got lazy and missed a few files that I hat to lose. Really no excuese for not being backed up.

The important thing, I have 35 GB of pictures backed up. I have those on 3 hard drives.

Thanks, Dayton