max size hard drive (or partition) for Latitude D600

My current notebook (with XP) has a 60GB IDE hard drive after
upgrading it from a 40GB drive a couple of years ago.

I was looking at buying a 350GB IDE hard drive for the system. I
would partition the drive anyway but is there any problem with using
this large drive on my D600?

David

David.
I see the possible problems with installing the larger drive:
1. Running time on "battery only" may be reduced (battery drain). Laptop
attached with AC adapter should be no problem.
2. Will need to update to latest BIOS version for that laptop, this might be
needed to handle large partitions.
3. Make sure that you back up all important files before running the cloning
process, so no data is lost if something goes wrong.
4. There might be an increase in internal heat for system components. You
should consider purchasing a "cooler" pad. You should already have one if
you use the notebook as a desktop. See examples at:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...02&name=Cooler

--
Have a Good Day,
Rich/rerat


"vbDavidC" <> wrote in message
news:814a5717-d644-4300-bf7c-...
My current notebook (with XP) has a 60GB IDE hard drive after
upgrading it from a 40GB drive a couple of years ago.

I was looking at buying a 350GB IDE hard drive for the system. I
would partition the drive anyway but is there any problem with using
this large drive on my D600?

David

Hi!

> I was looking at buying a 350GB IDE hard drive for the system.

Be sure it's IDE/PATA and not SATA. The largest 2.5" notebook hard
drive I could find in PATA was that from Western Digital, at 320GB.

You may have problems. The Latitude D800 lacks 48-bit LBA support in
its BIOS. This is a curious omission when many older Dell systems *do*
have such support. If your D600 does not, you will only see the first
137GB of the drive when it is installed.

William

Thanks for the info,

William, it definitely will be a PATA drive. Your info was helpful
although probably not what I wanted to hear. I will determine if my
laptop has that limitation. I hope not. But if not I can live with
my 60GB drive and keep all my large files on an external drive.

William,

It seems like it will work based on some info I found.

I checked the internet and found the following. I think I have heard
this argument in the past about the BIOS may not support it but the OS
can.

The listed the articles below. The last posting seems the most
definite that it is doable.

ARTICLE 1

^ Wrong.

If a 160 GB hard drive is installed in a Latitude D600 portable
computer, the system BIOS will report the drive size as 137 GB.
Systems developed prior to availability of 48-bit LBA drives may not
include support for these drives at the BIOS level. The drive size
will be reported correctly in the operating system and will function
normally.

http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=641116

ARTICLE 2 (Here is a snippet of another post regarding the original XP
(pre SP1) )

Well that was an NTFS limitation with the original XP only supporting
32bit LBA wasn't so it couldn't support a NTFS volume over 127gb in
size so therefore it's a limitation. XP SP1 or above supports 48bit
LBA and doesn't have this limitation.

SAME ARTICLE ANOTHER POST REFERENCING A D600

That I can go out and buy a Western Digital 1TB external drive and it
will be ~ 937 GB formatted, one partition FAT 32 means yes a FAT 32
drive can go above 32 GB.

Microsoft imposed a limit with their installers to restrict a FAT 32
volume to 32 GB, there are no MS tools that will happily format over
the Redmond imposed limit.

As said, it's the LBA issue, irrespective of whether it's NTFS Fat32
or anything. Service Pack 2 in XP addressed that, so if your copy of
XP predates that you'll need to follow the other solutions suggested
in this thread.

While you're at it, I have no idea as to what motherboard is being
used, consider a BIOS flash – some BIOSes also had a similar problem
in recognizing large capacity drives.

For example I have a Dell Latitude D600 laptop, the latest version of
the BIOS (a16) refuses to show anything above 127GB, but once Windows
XP SP2 went on it, I could see the entire 250GB disk I put into it.

http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum...m/1198140.html

Partition Assistant can solve your problem, and you will very pleased that it has free edition, I promise--Partition Assistant Home Edition.
Then, I suggest you read the article first--Guidelines on how to partition a hard drive by Creating, Deleting, Formatting and Resizing Partition, you also can find that is helpful for ur problem.
extend-partition.com/resource/how-to-partition-a-hard-drive.html