do i need anything else when replacing hdd.

blinkey 101

HI guys cany any one shed some light on this for me.

i have a dell inspiron 1521 with 100gig hdd and want to put a 160gig hdd from a toshiba L300 into my dell. so what i need to know is will i need any software or product key from the new hdd. or is it a case of just putting in new hdd and off i go. iv never done this before so any help would be much appreciated .

daveharnett

No problems, as long as both drives use ide connections (most likely). Installing XP can get a little squiffy if you are using a sata drive though.

blinkey 101

Cheers daveharnett for your quick reply .:)would it be possible to kinda give me in laymans terms a small break down on how its done. now i know how to swap around the hdd but after that im looking into a black hole .

Gadgetman496

blinkey 101 wrote: »

Cheers daveharnett for your quick reply .:)would it be possible to kinda give me in laymans terms a small break down on how its done. now i know how to swap around the hdd but after that im looking into a black hole .

Physically install the second drive but make sure to set it to "SLAVE" (This is done by setting the little jumper on the back of the drive, there's a small diagram on the drive itself telling you which pins to use)

Then watch this video.


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Blazer

Ignore all the above. All based on desktop copmputers.
The 1521 can hold only 1 internal hard drive unless you have the media bay dock to install a 2nd one. In other words you would have to remove the dvd drive for the hard drive to go into it. Hard drives are S-ATA.

If you plan to actually remove the existing hard drive and replace it with the bigger drive you will need the original disks that came with your system to reinstall the operating system and additional drivers and software.
Normally takes approx 1 hour or so.
Look for either the XP CD or the Vista DVD depending what OS is on the original. It's also possible that Dell didn't send you disks but rather used a partition on your hard drive to store the image. This means you'd need to ghost your current hard drive onto the new one. Most likely you wouldn't have the connectors for this.
You will not need to change any jumper settings on the hard drives.

blinkey 101

Once again guys thanks for your replys:).
Hi mathew reilly yes your right got no discs with my laptop but there is this on my recovery D.

dell.
program files.
sources.
tools.
users.
windows.

Sorry guys i really know zip about all this would the above be what i need to replace the new hdd ?

Blazer

You're probably better off ghosting that drive but it might be too much for you.
Do you have any dell xp cd? Or know someone who has.
If so you can use that..your serial code will be on your laptop's coa label.

blinkey 101

mathew i might know some one that has one il give that a shot
thanks again for your help much appreciated and to the rest of the guys that replied .