Laptop Hard disk replacement

[O'Neill]

Hey guys and girls,

I have a Dell Inspiron 6000 notebook. Recently i have been receiving disk read errors upon startup and have had to re-install windows from scratch after formatting the unreadable hard disk. I have been interested in updating my hard disk capacity for a while as, quite embarassingly, i only have 30GB to play with at the moment!!

Will i be able to simply swap my old hard disk for a new, larger capacity drive?
I was thinking about either this 160GB drive or a 120GB drive, both Hitachi and SATA.

http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Components/Hard+Drives/Laptop/SATA/160GB+Hitachi+2.5%22+SATA+Laptop+Drive?productId=2 9266

Also, has anyone ever had to return an item to the aria store? I purchasd a 160GB drive but it was an IDE compatible drive and I only found this out after opening the bag it was sealed in :(
It's still in perfect condition, just opened. Will that be o.k for returning?

Thanks for your time :)

[monkey56657]

I was unable to find out for sure but I think that this laptop uses IDE connector not SATA.

If thats the case then one of these:

http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Components/Hard+Drives/Laptop/IDE/

[O'Neill]

Thanks for the reply monkey.

I found out that my HDD is the one shown below.

http://www.superwarehouse.com/Toshiba_40GB_SuperSlim_MK4026GAX_Hard_Drive/HDD2193/p/357828

I'm still a little confused as to whether the interface is IDE or SATA though as the specs table on the above website states a "DMA/ATA-100 (Ultra)" as the interface and the interface connectors as "44 pin IDC". I haven't replaced a HDD before so feel free to point out anything painstakingly obvious that i might not have picked up on :)

Thanks

[monkey56657]

^ This seems to confirm its IDE so your looking for any on the link above. Im not sure whether the motherboard has HDD size limit some old ones might not handle the larger drives but I dont think its that old laptop so you should be fine. No where can I see anything about capacity limit.

[O'Neill]

Thanks again monkey :) I have now fitted my hard drive and have my laptop running with a fresh install of windows. Working very nicely so far, just a pain getting all the automatic updates downloaded :|

Thanks again