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kirschi wrote:

Hello,

 

I wanted to upgrade my harddisk in my Inspiron 3800 Laptop. I bought a Samsung 80 GB HDD. Unfortunately the Laptop hangs up in the Bios and the Laptop does not recognize the new harddisk.

 

Can anyone tell me what the maximum HDD size is that I can use? Or may this be another problem?

 

Thanks,
Kirschi

 

Did you move the blade adapter from the pins of the old drive to the pins of the new drive?

Yes of course I did.

 

I also connected the harddisk to an external FW chassis. The disk itself works. It only does not work in the Laptop.

 

May there be an incompatability between Dell and Samsung HDDs?

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kirschi wrote:

Yes of course I did.

 

You'd be surprised at how many people don't...

 

I also connected the harddisk to an external FW chassis. The disk itself works. It only does not work in the Laptop.

 

May there be an incompatability between Dell and Samsung HDDs?  No, of course there isn't.  :smileywink:

 

I'd suggest you reseat the CD drive, if that doesn't work, reseat memory, video, etc.

You are right. It should at least than recognise a few GB.

 

This is what I tried until now.

 

- changed memory (1x128 MB Module and 1x256 MB Module)

- removed battery and CD Rom

- removed anything else (NIC)

 

unfortunately without success.

 

The harddisk came without any jumpers; so I jumpered it from master to cable select. Now the Laptop shows a message that the harddisk is password protected although this disk is brandnew. A google search showed me a post in another forum where someone had exactly the same problem. In this case some Fujitsu harddisks had the same problems; hitachi and thoshiba drives were running without any problems. I will send the disk back to my dealer and order a Hitachi drive. Maybe this one will work.

 

Thanks for help ;)

The 3800 and its clone the CPxJ will only recognise a 64gb or smaller HDD even with the latest BIOS version. (Tested personally)

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leduke30 wrote:

The 3800 and its clone the CPxJ will only recognise a 64gb or smaller HDD even with the latest BIOS version. (Tested personally)

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If that's the case, wouldn't it recognize 64gb of the 80?

I can only conjecture that it may be the entire size is rejected because of Board/BIOS Limitations . When I installed that same 80gb in a C610 on another occasion, with an older BIOS version, the drive was recognised as present but at only 15GB capacity. I flashed the BIOS to the latest version and and it picked it up at full capacity. Dell must have removed the BIOS Limitation with either the C600 or C610. the previous CPtV/S and the CPxH/J plus the Inspiron 3700/3800 all use the same boards, so this limit would apply to all of them. It is not that the boards will not recognise it at full value; they just will not recognise the 80+ drives at all