Hard Drive Replacement for MHT2080AH

[IceBoy109]

I just inherited an old Dell Inspiron 8600 laptop. The hard drive is cooked and I'm looking to replace it and see if I can get some use out of it. I'm just not familiar with anything other than IDE and SATA for my desktop and I don't really know how to make sure I'm getting a compatible hard drive.

I was hoping I could get this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152110 (SAMSUNG Spinpoint M5 HM160HC) while it's on sale, but I want to make sure it will work. I don't know what Ultra ATA100 / ATA-6 is or if I have to worry about it. Thanks for the help!

 

[IceBoy109]

Found a couple open threads where people had suggested WD1200BEVE as a replacement for the same model computer but with no follow ups as to whether it worked or not. Again, any advice is appreciated. Thanks. =)

 

[fzabkar]

The Samsung has the same interface and almost identical dimensions. It also has slightly lower power consumption. My only concern would be whether Dell's BIOS is 48-bit LBA capable, otherwise it won't see a capacity in excess of 128GiB (= 137GB).

MHT20XXAH 40GB, 60GB and 80GB Product Specification:
http://www.fujitsu.com/downloads/HK/mht20xxah.pdf

Mobile PATA Spinpoint M5P Product Specification:
http://www.samsung.com/global/system/business/hdd/prdmodel/2007/9/12/896192M5P.pdf

 

[IceBoy109]

Thanks for the reply fzabkar. You bring up a good point with the hard drive capacity and I think it is capped at the 128 mark. I don't think I understand the different HD interfaces quite yet (Ultra ATA100, ATA-6, etc...) If the WD one WD12000BEVE will work I"ll just get that one. Thanks again.

 

[fzabkar]

ATA-6 refers to version 6 of the ATA command standard.

Ultra ATA100 (UDMA 100) refers to the interface speed or transfer mode.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_ATA