Puttin second garddrive in Dell Dimension 5200

Recon

So I have a dell dimension 5200 with a 40 GB hard drive. And I'd like to get a second internal hard drive for it. Will one fit? Is there the space in the tower for one?

Are there different types of connection on internal hard drives or are they all standard?

And are there any issues with it regarding hard drive size. will it "see" a 500GB hard drive?

2.8 GHz
1.5 GB RAM
Windows XP SP2

yoyo

Recon wrote: »

So I have a dell dimension 5200 with a 40 GB hard drive. And I'd like to get a second internal hard drive for it. Will one fit? Is there the space in the tower for one?

Are there different types of connection on internal hard drives or are they all standard?

And are there any issues with it regarding hard drive size. will it "see" a 500GB hard drive?

2.8 GHz
1.5 GB RAM
Windows XP SP2

More than likely that Dell uses a PATA (IDE) interface for connecting hard disks, you can check this seeing if theres a flat long robbion cable connecting the hard drive to the main board. XP wont have a issiue seeing 500gig, just make sure if you get one you format it to NTFS, and also you would have to set the hard drive jumper (see the label) to slave or cable select in order for the hard disk to be useable,

Nick

Recon

Thanks, I'll look into that so.

I'm sure it has that long ribbon cable. But how do I do the "set the hard drive jumper (see the label) to slave or cable select" part? And do you mean the label that'll come with the new hard drive?

yoyo

Yeah man, every hard disk will have a sticker on it, and on the sticker it will show a diagram showing if the block goes to master, slave or cable select, iirc my bros older dell was cable selected so you'll prob be using that, http://www.pcguide.com/byop/byop_SettingHardDriveJumpers.htm , heres a guide here how to jumper the hard disk, I'd say set jumper to cable select first, think thats dell preference of doing it. Ohh yeah, a new hard disk will also need to be formatted once installed, windows wont detect it immediately, to format it:
Right click my computer icon in start menu and click manage
Click the Disk Management category
Right click to the left of the new hard disk and "Initialise disk"
Once inintialised right click drive again and format it to NTFS

Nick

Recon

Thank you very much for all the info, I'll post again in a few days to let you know how I get on!