Adding HDD -> Dell XPS333

David C

Hi,
I'm getting sick of my old 8.4 GB hard drive being full all the time and having to move mp3s up onto cdr so I have decided I want to add a 120GB 7200rpm hdd to my Dell XPS D333.
(IBM Deskstar 120GXP 120GB IDE 8.5ms 7200rpm - OEM ebuyer.com £109.56STG)

The only problem is I don't know where I can slot it in..
The 8.4GB seems to be attached vertically behind the front panel of the tower where the power button/hdd activity light is.
My two 5 1/4" bays are taken up by DVD Rom & CDRW drives.
Will I have to take out the old DVD drive to slot in the new hard disk or can i locate the drive away from the bays down near where the existing drive is?
Any ideas on what speed the old 8.4GB drives Dell provided might be? I would guess it's 5400rpm, curious but can't tell for sure.
Is ebuyer a good choice for or is there a cheaper Irish alternative? Presume IBM are good enough?.. Seems to be best value...

Help much appreciated,
Thanks,
David

byte

Is there no room behind the existing drive for your new IBM? I have my drives in vertical position, one behind the other. Is there a spare plug on the HDD IDE cable to plug in new drive as master/slave? I would reckon the current HDD is 5400rpm.

As for Irish online shops, a lot of people, including myself, recommend Komplett.ie . I also recommend Marx-Computers or ITdirect. There's a stickythread on the best online shops.;)

And yes, IBM would be a good make.
<biased>tho not as good as Western Digital Caviar Special Edition HDD with 8MB cache! </biased>:D

sceptre

www.overclockers.co.uk usually have good prices on hard drives (and reasonable shipping afaik)

I've heard lots of good things about that Wetern DIgital drive

David C

thanks for the advice!
I wouldn't mind spending an extra few € on the Western Digital if its much better? The IBM had an 8.5ms access rate whereas the Western Digital has a slower 8.9ms rate. IBM is also cheaper so I assumed that was the bargain to go for!

Does this 8mb cache make all the difference then, yea?
The main concern i have is playing MP3 whilst opening/writing other files without it skipping and stopping whislt the hard disk spins to capacity.
Do you think the Western Digital would outperform the IBM particularly in this instance?

Maybe I can put the drive behind the existing HD. I was just going by instructions on this page:
http://service.dell.com/dell/step/1,,33732+32+82+23520+11297,00.html
which seemed to suggest i needed to use a drive bay for the new HDD. Would you say it will just slot in down below or would i need some sort of holder?

Gerry

I thought those dells had a horizontal 3.5 inch drive bay free, anyways you will need the latest bios for that machine before the drive will work, even so it may not recognise it properly. Do a bit of googling, see if people have gotten a 120 gig drive working with the intel al440lx ( your motherboard ).

David C

I was thinking i needed a 5 1/4" bay...
Yea.. I do have a free 3.5" bay..
If I slot it in there will it just be plain plastic at the front of the bay? That seems fine..
Will check google now.. Updating BIOS is no problem...

Thanks again

David C

Good news :-)
the theoretical maximum of this category of motherboard is 137,438,953,472 bytes or 137.4 GB
http://support.intel.com/support/motherboards/desktop/hdd_size.htm

komplett.ie works out much cheaper than OverClockers when the sterling/postage is taken into account, plus it's Irish..
Hopefully I will get around to ordering it tommorow

G

if it's any help to ya I stuck a 20g 7200 Maxtor in with an XPS500 BI440ZX.

It's on the primary slave and I have it sitting on the floor of the desktop. (which tbh is not a wise place to put it but it's worked grand so far )

G

Stephen

Actually, Komplett are norwegian

SickBoy

Theres a mounting plate under the floopy drive in Dell XPS systems where you can attach the drive. You need to remove the front bezzle and then the 2 screws below the fdd to release the plate.