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General discussion

Hard drive damaged; need to buy new drive.

Jul 10, 2006 7:33AM PDT

Dell Dimension 4400, WD 120GB, XP, P4, 640 RAM

The smoke damaged my hard drive. It has failed the WD Diagnostic SMART test. I also did the 10:30 hour extended test--which it also failed. I was advised to back up my data and buy a new drive.

My Dell system is 4 years old. My insurance company says they figure 6 years for the life of a pc.

I can't decide if I should buy another 120GB drive or splurge and get a bigger drive.

Any pros and cons?

Discussion is locked

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go for it
Jul 10, 2006 8:11AM PDT

Bigger hard drives are inexpensive these days. You can find good 300GB internal HD for less than USD$100.

If you go over 137GB, then you have to watch for for 48-bit compatibility issues.

1. system BIOS must support it
2. Windows XP must have SP1 or later

More info: 48bitlba.com

If your BIOS version is earlier than ''A03'' (Release Date: 2/26/2002) then you need to download and install the latest FlashBIOS update from http://support.dell.com. This will give you support for those larger HD's.

I'd get the ATA/100 or ATA/133 HD with at least 8MB cache and 7200rpm that meets my budget.

NOTE: Your system is too old to take a SATA HD without adding a PCI hard disk controller card.

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go for it (addendum)
Jul 10, 2006 8:18AM PDT

Just so you don't get confused at support.dell.com:

Enter your Dell SERVICE TAG or your computer's PRODUCT MODEL first. You need to look at DRIVERS & DOWNLOADS for that FlashBIOS update.

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i'd suggest a bigger one.
Jul 17, 2006 8:42PM PDT

i think that nowadays it's betterto buy 200-250Gb drive. also if you don't want to reinstall
windows and other progs, you can simply clone the HD, i'd recomend to use some of famouse
backup progs for it, for example true image.