Installing a new Harddrive on a Dell Inspiron PC

[bruceb58]

Re: Installing a new Harddrive on a Dell Inspiron PC

Check out this link:

http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-drive-imaging-program.htm

 

[Boomyal]

Re: Installing a new Harddrive on a Dell Inspiron PC

I got a new, unused 2009 version of Acronis for 12.99 shipped.

 

[dolluper]

Re: Installing a new Harddrive on a Dell Inspiron PC

Hey Boom
Try this little program ifin your computer works with it .....check on models list
I put it on most of Dells I see to force the fans on full time since Dells burn
themselves out including the HD's just got an Old Dell Latitude running again
for a kid up the street....only way was with this program....His would lock up
or freeze on pages.....it's only a P3 on XP ...512 max ram also....boat anchor lol's
Has no money so I fixed for free ....his dad died on hard times
check it out http://www.diefer.de/i8kfan/index.html or try speedfan

 

[Boomyal]

Re: Installing a new Harddrive on a Dell Inspiron PC

It doesn't list the Dimension Dolluper. But you did cause me to check to make sure the case and powersupply fans were working. They are!

Back to adding a new HD. I'm having to order an additional HD caddy/bracket off of ebay. There was no place to mount a second HD but the case is set up to piggyback an additional bracket to and below the existing one.

 

[bruceb58]

Re: Installing a new Harddrive on a Dell Inspiron PC

I keep on forgetting this is a laptop. Why do you really need to keep the second drive in anything than an external case or just transfer your data and leave it at that?

You can just get one of these and use it to transfer everything to your new harddrive once you get the OS on there.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/USB-2-0-SAT...108?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item4600a6d874
I have a couple bare hard drives that I use such a cable with to backup and remove from my house.

 

[Boomyal]

Re: Installing a new Harddrive on a Dell Inspiron PC

I keep on forgetting this is a laptop. Why do you really need to keep the second drive in anything than an external case or just transfer your data and leave it at that?

You can just get one of these and use it to transfer everything to your new harddrive once you get the OS on there.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/USB-2-0-SAT...108?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item4600a6d874
I have a couple bare hard drives that I use such a cable with to backup and remove from my house.

Yeah, bruce, I have one of those. It is pretty spiffy. I used it to access Mrs B's old Dell laptop HD when the laptop would not boot. The drive would read real well, hooked to my PC so there was something else going on with the laptop.

As far as the second HD for the Dimension PC, I figure that I might as well keep it inside the case. It is a 40 gig and the new Maxtor that I have been kicking around for some time is an 80 gig. It'll just make it real easy to use for a backup drive without having to cough up any more dough for another external drive. I already have two, hooked up to other computers.

 

[MTboatguy]

Re: Installing a new Harddrive on a Dell Inspiron PC

For those looking for image software to put a new disk in your system, make sure and check the drive manufactures website, I know that both Segate and Western Digital have free software for doing this, if you have at least one of their hardrive's installed in your system, I just installed a new Toshiba drive in this laptop I am typing on, it had a segate in it, so I was able to download and use their segate move utility to transfer the system and files from the old segate to the new toshiba. Currently on this laptop, I have a 640 gig installed, and have an additional 8 terabytes of external storage. Both Western and Segates software is private branded by Acronis for their companies, but it is the same software that you purchase.

 

[Boomyal]

Re: Installing a new Harddrive on a Dell Inspiron PC

Well Guess what! Seems that FireFox remedied all the issues that I was having with IE7 and then IE8. Maybe I will ride with it for awhile before I go the route of the new HD and OS. Not to mention that FF has an automatic spell check too. That is pretty spiffy.

 

[hrdwrkingacguy]

Re: Installing a new Harddrive on a Dell Inspiron PC

I haven't owned an IDE anything in ages but when I did I had problems with different brands of HD's and using the master/slave jumpers...If memory serves I used to set them to CS and just put them on a cable each and the secondary ide had the CD player, then I would go into the bios and select a boot order and the drive I booted from would be C: and the other D: and the cdrom F:...

 

[hrdwrkingacguy]

Re: Installing a new Harddrive on a Dell Inspiron PC

Well Guess what! Seems that FireFox remedied all the issues that I was having with IE7 and then IE8. Maybe I will ride with it for awhile before I go the route of the new HD and OS. Not to mention that FF has an automatic spell check too. That is pretty spiffy.

Remember you can click the little down arrow next to the search engine icon on the right and hit manage search engines if you have one you like...Google does a word look up thing that when I need to spell something right I enter the first few letters and it will show you the rest of the word...If you have any problems with it storing you passwords let me know there is a trick to it if you like it to keep your information like I do so you don't have to enter it every time...

 

[bruceb58]

Re: Installing a new Harddrive on a Dell Inspiron PC

If you have any problems with it storing you passwords let me know there is a trick to it if you like it to keep your information like I do so you don't have to enter it every time...

Checkout http://www.lastpass.com for password mangagement.

 

[Boomyal]

Re: Installing a new Harddrive on a Dell Inspiron PC

Checkout http://www.lastpass.com for password mangagement.

I filed that away bruce.

Thanks to you and all the others for your inputs on this post!!

 

[dolluper]

Re: Installing a new Harddrive on a Dell Inspiron PC

Hummm finally broke down and got rid of the bloat ...about time Boom it's 2012 not 2000 LOL's ...hard to switch eh

 

[Boomyal]

Re: Installing a new Harddrive on a Dell Inspiron PC

Hummm finally broke down and got rid of the bloat ...about time Boom it's 2012 not 2000 LOL's ...hard to switch eh

I like to go by the old adage, if it ain't broke why go thru the pain of figuring out new things?

Fact of the matter is that my IE's (2 computers) have been deteriorating in performance for a little while now, ie slow loads, etc. It's just recently that one of them (primary surfing unit) would hardly even work.

Thank Goodness for all the good sports on iboats!!!

 

[hrdwrkingacguy]

Re: Installing a new Harddrive on a Dell Inspiron PC

I doubt its just an IE thing(although in my opinion IE blows)...Plenty of things will take away from performance...A big one is not having enough memory and running a lot of stuff on start up then your computer has to access the page file on the HDD to compensate...Memory is like ***** size, you can never have enough...

 

[bassman284]

Re: Installing a new Harddrive on a Dell Inspiron PC

Tell me about it. I'm posting from a Dell Dimension that will celebrate its 10th birthday in a little over a month. 1.8 G P4 with 256M RAM. Bumped to 512 M when McAfee 11.0 took over and pretty much sucked up the first 256. Bumped to a gig about a year and a half ago with very little real gain.

When I got it back in 2002 I used AOL dialup and got pretty satisfactory performance as long as I didn't try to download anything really big. About 2005 I switched to DSL which just screamed, in a relative way.

I got an Acer laptop a couple of years ago when I thought the Dell was giving up the fight and the Acer shows me that the DSL is quite adequate for my needs if the pooter is up to it. Sadly, the poor old Dell really isn't anymore. Works pretty good on most forums like here, but something like Foxsports or ESPN can take 5 to 8 minutes to load a page. Takes 5 to 8 seconds on the Acer (which still seems like a lot).

Point is, web developers want to use the fanciest, coolest and most memory intensive stuff available and old pooters are going to get slammed to their knees, even though they're doing the best they can. There is really not a whole lot you can do to speed up an old computer in a meaningful way. Gotta get a new one.

 

[dolluper]

Re: Installing a new Harddrive on a Dell Inspiron PC

Hey Boom there are two free products at Piriform that are excellent for keeping old puters keep oning
CCleaner + Defraggler both are excellent so are the other two ....they do other things handy to have
check it out here....remember to uncheck unless you want chrome or something else?....bottom uncheck first
link below
http://www.piriform.com/

 

[Boomyal]

Re: Installing a new Harddrive on a Dell Inspiron PC

Hey Boom there are two free products at Piriform that are excellent for keeping old puters keep oning
CCleaner + Defraggler both are excellent so are the other two ....they do other things handy to have
check it out here....remember to uncheck unless you want chrome or something else?....bottom uncheck first
link below
http://www.piriform.com/

I'll check/them out dolluper. Seems that I have looked at and run CCleaner in times past. My recollection was that I didn't have the slightest clue about what to do with the results?

 

[hrdwrkingacguy]

Re: Installing a new Harddrive on a Dell Inspiron PC

My rules of thumb for memory when I build a system...256 meg is insulting, 512 isn't much better but functional if your patient, 1024 is the absolute minimum I would run if you don't use a AV program, 2048 should really be the target to hit and anything after that is gravy for the average person...

My computer had 2 gig of ram and went and spent 75$ at frys electronics for a 4 gig kit...I noticed that both sets of memory were the same manufacturer corsair and the same clock speeds...I added 2 4 gig sticks and 2 1 gig sticks and my computer has 6 gig and works great now...Memory over 2 gig in an older computer will make a world of difference...

 

[bruceb58]

Re: Installing a new Harddrive on a Dell Inspiron PC

Do a search for a free program called process explorer. Way better than built in task manager. You can use that to see your memory and processor usage easily. Also what is nice if that every process has a company name assosciated with it. It also has a button that automatically looks up a process online if you don't recognize it.