Dale Ward

Greetings!

I have a second-hand Dell Latitude CPx J650T with a 12GB HD (11.2GB in Properties). I'm trying to find a bigger HD, and I've noticed something odd.

When I price drives that state they are specifically for my model Latitude, they are 20-40% more expensive than generic drives of the same size.

Are Dell-compatible drives really so different that they warrant a higher price... or am I paying through the nose for the privilege of having "genuine Dell inside"?

hwm54112

The specs I saw for your laptop show it will use any standard ATA hard drive ( 3 units on ebay). Some dell models use an adapter that may make it look special. The adapter, on the pin connector, slides off and can be used on the new drive

crazijoe

You must watch when replacing an old machine with a larger drive. Some of them will not accept drives larger than 32MB. You may need to upgrade the system BIOS.

Terrister

The dell drives should include the mounting hardware to mount it in your laptop. If you already have this you can use any drive supported by your laptop.

laboye

A standard 2.5 inch ATA drive should work in your model.

Dale Ward

Thanks, Friends!

You just saved me about 30 bucks!

minster9

crazijoe told dale ward that bios might need tweaked when putting bigger hard drive in older machine. Have old toughbook cf-45 with oem 2gb hd,233pentium. Replaced oem 64mb ram w/128 chip[max mobo will support] which helped alot. want to install 40gb/8mb cache 5200rpm[?] hd newegg's selling for 52 bucks. WD,ATA-6,3yr warranty. Was wanting to copy old hd to new one using usb/ide cord before install. Any serious issues I should be aware of? Thanks everybody;great site!

ebackhus

It's best that you start your own thread for issues, even if they are similar.

I've put a 20GB drive into a Pentium 233 ThinkPad but I doubt it'd support anything higher than 32GB.

hwm54112

Hello minster,

Separate threads are always suggested but in this case your issue is actually very different because of the initial drive sizes. There’s only one drive size barrier when upgrading from a 12 gig drive and that’s at 32 gig, until you reach 137. Even with that bios limitation, sometimes bios will show a 40 gig drive as being a 33 or 34 gig drive, and windows will recognize the entire drive anyway because the drive geometry of a 40 gig drive may be the same as that of a 32 gig drive. Bios understands the geometry, it just doesn’t recognize numbers higher than 34.

When upgrading from a 2 gig drive, there are potentially 4or 5 potential drive size barriers, which don’t necessarily apply, except the 8 gig barrier which is bios related and I believe is bios specific. With one or two bios makers it’s an insurmountable issue. It’s possible that if you have the 8 gig limit, that the drive will work, but only see 8 gigs. However, it’s also possible that it will fail completely.

Your best bet is to start a thread with toughbook cf-45 in the title. Because of the drive size and 8 gig barrier, you can’t generalize this part of the issue.

DaveOxford

Just to let you know that I have successfully replaced a 6 gig HDD with a 40 gig HDD on a CF-45.

This is what I did: I mounted a new 40 gig HDD in a USB backup drive casing, then used Acronis True Image 9.0 to copy the installed 6 gig drive onto it. I then mounted the new 40 gig drive in my machine (Toughbook CF-45 266MHz 160Mb ram) and booted up. It worked perfectly, preserving all my settings, files ... everything. Not only that, things seemed to be going a bit faster, and I guess this is because modern disks are a bit faster to give up their data than the old ones. I was impressed.

But wait. I was expecting to find that only 12 gig or perhaps 32 gigs of the drive would be recognised, as per the previous remarks in this thread. But all the indications are that the full 39 or so gigs are being detected in FAT32. True, the 4.5 gigs of stuff I had on the old disk had spread out to take up over 6 gigs, and I understand that this is because of the new larger block (sector? chunk? forgotten the word, but you know what I mean) size stores the stuff less economically. I loaded well over 12 gigs of stuff on the disk, just to make sure it could be done.

So, I'm pleased to have exchanged my crowded old 6 gig disk for a 40 gig disk, and I have to report that True Image worked faultlessly (BTW, I have no connection with Acronis) Still a bit confused, though, about that upper limit. Will my data disappear in some future retributive disk blizzard?

hwm54112

Hi dave,

Thanks for posting your results. The cf45 drive inquiry has come up 4 or 5 times and this is the first confirmation that it will recognize anything larger than 8 gigs that I’m aware of. I don’t think you’ll have a “future retributive disk blizzard”. Obviously your bios doesn’t have the 8 gig barrier. Once you pass that barrier, it’s just a math equation. As long as bios understands the formula (drive geometry), the answer bios gives (the actual drive size bios sees and reports) doesn’t really matter, windows will see the drive for what it is.

In addition the 32 gig bios barrier isn’t a barrier in the normal sense in that it isn’t based on drive sizes in general rather it is based on a limited number of award bios’ inability to handle one drive parameter properly (a mistake by award?)

Your concern arises from the idea that XP will support fat32 over 32 gig but may not be able to create them. See this thread. That limitation doesn’t apply to you.


Bill

DaveOxford

Bill,

Thanks for reassuring me about my data.

In case it helps another CF-45 owner with a similar project in mind, the BIOS this machine is running is:

Phoenix4 Release 6.0.A Version 1.00L14.A (Pheonix Technologies 1985-98)

Thanks everyone for a great site.

Dave

laboye

This is a notable entry. I've already come accross 2 other threads that are asking about the CF-45.