Pretty much any IDE drive will do. Installing is very easy for those who READ THE INSTRUCTIONS THAT CAME WITH THE DRIVE. Sorry for shouting but so many people forget this. Anyway, Dell has provided installation instructions in your system manual; read that first. Post back if you need mroe information.
If you plan on adding a hard drive larger than 137 gigs then make sure you are using BIOS version A04 or later. Starting with that version UDMA support for 48-bit LBA hard drives larger than 137GB was added to the BIOS. If you have to upgrade your BIOS then upgrade to only version A06 if you have a firewire card otherwise you can go with the latest version which is A08. The reason being is that version A08 has a conflict with firewire cards. Also you can update the BIOS directly to the newer version without having to install the in-between versions.
osprey4
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November 29th, 2004 21:00
shesagordie
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November 29th, 2004 21:00
Cymruu.
Any ATA/IDE/EIDE Hard Drive should work, try to buy a Seagate, Western Digital or Hitachi with 7200rpm and a 8mb cache.
The following are Dell's instructions for replacing the HD in the D4550. Note the jumper setting is "Cable Select"
http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/dim4550/replace.htm#1152669
After replacing the drive you will need to partition, format and reinstall XP.
http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/software_reinstall/en/index?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs&SystemID=DIM_PNT_P4_4550&ServiceTag=&results=true&category=0&OperatingSystem=47
Bev.
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November 30th, 2004 10:00