I bought a Dell Inspiron 8000 laptop in December 2000, and when the HDD failed last month I assumed it was out of warrranty, and bought a replacement. Turns out my warranty extends through 12/03 (Wow kudos to Dell) and now they are shipping me another replacement.
I can’t really use the extra drive in the laptop, but as it’s 20 gigs I would like to put it into one of the desktops on my home network.
I don’t know exactly what kind of drive this is, but it is tiny. It’s roughly the size of half a deck of cards. It has 47 pins, but 4 of them aren’t used in the laptop config and I assume they are master/slave jumpers.
Is there any way to install this drive in a regular desktop using the stock IDE controller? I also have a desktop with an SCSI controller if that’s easier. I’m hoping there’s a simple cable I can use.
keep in mind that laptop hard drives usually spin at 4200 rpm and tend to be painfully slow. might work for storage on the secondary ide chain, but don’t put it on the same chain with a ATA33/66/100/133 drive lest you dumb down that bus. and i wouldn’t advise loading your system on this drive either, as your current hard drive is more likely than not, much faster then the laptop drive. good luck!
I wasn’t aware it could slow down the other drives. I guess I’ll put it on the machine with scuzzy hard drives, as the only thing on the IDE chain is a floppy.
Not to be a cheapskate, but laptop drives are EXPENSIVE.
Sell it on Ebay and buy the one you want.
PS: (And this is a major tip:)
Use a second drive for a BACKUP. Just hook it up as a slave, and ghost one drive to the other. Then, disconnect. Now, you have a PERFECT backup. Takes me 35 minutes, and if the main drive pooches, no problem.
I also have a 1.2 gig that has a perfectly installed and updated Windows 98SE. So, if I want to do a full wipe, I can do that too.
Also Try looking around at computergeeks.com they have all sorts of weird things you can use & they might have something for you there. An external HD case would be fun.