[Red207]

I would like to up great my hard drive from 40 gig to 160 0r 250 gig.
it is a ata/100 7200. can i install a ultra sata/100 7200 rpm. also i would like to install a dvd burner the one i have now is a cd/rw. can i install a combo dvd/rw/cd/rw.
Thanks

 

[ceri sheeran]

Hi,

The Dell 2400 series was a budget machine with on board graphics and very little upgradability. No AGP or PCI Express graphics slot.

You would need a PCI SATA control card to use any SATA drive.

You could swap out the CD writer for a DVD writer.

Personally, I would suggest you limit any upgrade to this machine to components you could then transplant into a new computer.

Or save for a better machine. Then use the D2400 box for LINUX or a file and print server.

Possibly upgrade the memory to get a bit more performance out of the machine. But I would not recommend spending money on what was a very budget computer.

hth

Ceri

 

[Wozer]

assuming you mean you want to replace the existing HDD with a new one (which entails cloning the OS to the new drive) I advise 160GB as the largest you want to go...larger drives are just not up to taking the 'abuse' of the constant writes and such being performed on an OS drive....if you are talking about adding in a second drive, then 250GB or larger is fine...

you can of course replace the existing cd/rw drive with a DVD combo drive..


the advice by Ceri is sound...considering you can buy a new Dell pretty cheap, any attempts to go bonkers on upgrading is a total waste of your money...

 

[linderman]

Hello:



I dont believe your motherboard has a sata controller, therfore if you want to use sata drives you would also need to buy a PCI slot sata controller card to run & connect a sata drive too. They cost about $35.00


Personally I would suggest you get a Western Digital ATA 100/133 IDE with 16mb cache 7200 rpm of the size you desire

the minimal performance boost you would see from the Sata drive would not warrant the $35.00 controller card I my humble opinion (IMHO)

I would get a bigger and faster (large cache) IDE drive as spec'd above, get the combo DVD drive you speak of , you should have atleast one gig or ram that would help your speed more than the sata drive if you dont have at least one gig now ?????

you should also get a new power supply(PSU) if you plan to add the hard drive and add the dvd rom drive

if you are going to replace your existing cd/rw with the combo drive then you may not need a PSU, but Dell's are know for having very limited PSU's in them and they dont hold up well to upgrade of components or add-in's

I personally would spend the $50.00 and get a Fortron 450 watt unit