Since these days I'm playing around with creating DVD movies using 3DS Max 2011, the Adobe products (photoshop, after effects, premiere pro, encore, audition) and possibility autodeskCAD plus gaming and gameplay screenshot captures on the Dell XPS M1530 laptop I bought last year, (and yes, I'm going to keep it on XP_sp3 (32-bit)) I googled to find what's the max size that I can upgrade this laptop's HDD in GB, and I found this info from Dell -

Info (from Dell) on max size/GB for Dell M1530 HDD upgrade

so I believe I'd like to add to my Christmas list for my folks to buy me a 1 TB 5400 rpm HDD so I can upgrade its HDD, but I'm keeping its RAM intact - its already at 4 GB, and the most XP can see is a little over 3 GB RAM, the only thing I'd like to upgrade in this laptop is the HDD.

What would you Boomers (incl. Jenny100 and InlandAZ) say?

Thanks in advance.

The current HDD (was upgraded a year ago Easter Weekend 2011) is approx. 300 - 320 GB.

EDIT - I'd like to go with Western Digital.

Check this one
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136927

Someone recommended it over at Notebookreview

http://forum.notebookreview.com/dell-xps-studio-xps/630642-dell-xps-m1530-1tb-harddrives.html

That drive you linked me to, Jenny, on newegg says its SATA, and I remember very clearly when upgrading the HDD from 200 GB to 300 GB last year I had to set the controller on the BIOS to IDE before the it would let me install/set up XP.

The references I've seen for that laptop all state it has an SATA controller.

That's because you didn't load the SATA driver during the install. The setting in the BIOS does not magically change the SATA drive into an IDE drive. It's only there for compatibility with older OS that lack the SATA drivers. In fact, that IDE setting wouldn't even be there if you had a laptop that used an IDE drive.

The M1530 definitely has a SATA drive. If you don't believe me, pull the drive out and look at the connectors
http://img862.imageshack.us/img862/3381/sataidelaptopharddrive.jpg

Suppose I got this new 1 TB Sata drive for the M1530, didn't bother with SATA controllers that I'd have to install by slipstreaming it into the XP OS install (I don't know how to slip stream, I tried to do it last year, it didn't work, so I went and I set the BIOS to IDE) and simply kept the BIOS set to IDE, will this work for this drive?

From the image posted by Jenny100, I now understand what a SATA HDD looks like vs a IDE HDD.



Do you mean that ~300 GB drive that I used last year to upgrade the 200 GB HDD with this new ~300 GB HDD, Jenny? If this is the case, then yes, I believe you, I'm amazed at your memory from a year ago.

It's not difficult. You just use nLite.
http://www.nliteos.com/guide/part1.html
You should probably slipstream a CD just for practice. You can also add Service Packs to an older Windows CD, or add drivers for your video card, audio card, or network card that aren't included with Windows. It's easy to find your drivers with a Dell because you can get them from the Dell website.


As long as your motherboard detects a 1TB hard drive, the IDE setting should work. The drive will just transfer data a little slower than it would with the default setting, but you probably won't notice with the games you play.


I remember quite a lot about Dell computers that were made at the particular time the M1530 was produced because I was thinking of buying a Dell laptop when the XPS M1330/M1530 series and Inspiron 1420/1520/1720 series came out and did a lot of research.

When I replaced the original HDD with the 320 GB HDD I bought from the link you gave me a year ago when I bought this laptop, Jenny, the first thing I did was d/l nLite and tried to use it to slip stream but the resulting disc didn't work, I don't recall why (maybe it was unbootable/whatever) so I had to resort to using my Dell XP install disc to install XP and and I had to set the BIOS to IDE.

So Jenny/Inland, when Christmas comes and I'm ready to upgrade the HDD (I'm keeping XP (32-bit) as the sole OS on this PC so I can play my older games) could you please guide me thru slipstreaming with nLite?



Ok, what's the max TB size for XP on the IDE setting?

and what's the max TB size for XP on the ACHI (or is it ACPI/APCI - I learned this in school during the fall '11 semester, but I forgot exactly what it was, please don't tell me, I'll go look it up maybe tomorrow in one of my schoolbooks and I'll tell you what I think it is/understand it is according to what my schoolbook says) setting?




Ok, so did you buy a Dell laptop, Jenny? If so what kind was it? If not, why didn't you buy a Dell laptop?

As for me when I was scouring ebay last winter for a second laptop with Optimus technology (with the intent of having XP on it), I was going according to the particular hardware specs that I wanted, and one day after much ebay searching, I found my Dell M1530 which I linked you and Inland to - just remembering this makes me feel so happy that I knew what to look for in a hardware "sweet spot" laptop (as well as the price) so that I was able to select this laptop without either of my nephews picking it for me/helping me.

You should try nLite again. I don't know what you did wrong, but be sure you follow the directions carefully and it should work. Make sure you don't just copy the .iso file to a CD. The .iso has to be burned as an image file so when you insert the CD you see the files on it. If all you see is an .iso file, you did it wrong.

The instructions are on the nLite website
http://www.nliteos.com/guide/index.html


It's AHCI.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AHCI
If the hard drive is not one that Dell supplied, you'll have to look for the drivers on the website of the hard drive manufacturer. The maximum hard drive size that's supported isn't determined by XP -- it's determined by your computer's motherboard.

and what's the max TB size for XP on the ACHI (or is it ACPI/APCI - I learned this in school during the fall '11 semester, but I forgot exactly what it was, please don't tell me, I'll go look it up maybe tomorrow in one of my schoolbooks and I'll tell you what I think it is/understand it is according to what my schoolbook says) setting?




Ok, so did you buy a Dell laptop, Jenny? If so what kind was it? If not, why didn't you buy a Dell laptop?

As for me when I was scouring ebay last winter for a second laptop with no Optimus technology since the Acer came with Optimus technology which cause some graphics issues in some games such as Alter Ego (with the intent of having XP on it), I was going according to the particular hardware specs that I wanted, and one day after much ebay searching, I found my Dell M1530 which I linked you and Inland to - just remembering this makes me feel so happy that I knew what to look for in a hardware "sweet spot" laptop (as well as the price) so that I was able to select this laptop without either of my nephews picking it for me/helping me.

So far this Dell M1530 laptop is still gong strong - plays all the games I throw at it - even that Alter Ego game with the Secu-Rom protection system (with no issues of any kind - and the screenshot taker took beautiful screenshots of my gameplay of Alter Ego - again, no issues of any kind) that I got from you, Jenny, in Aug. 2010 - remember?

EDIT - I googled for the max XP (b2-bit) TB-size and some people were saying it's 2 TB, but they mean 2 TB could either be the size of each partition on a large TB-HDD or a single-partition 2 TB HDD - so just checked on Best Buy's website - internal laptop HDD's go up to 1 TB, and on Newegg they're 2 TB and under.

EDIT 2 - found this site while googling that sells laptop parts (after having checked Best Buy/Newegg/Tiger Direct) and this site sells parts/accessories for the Dell XPS M1530 including 1 TB 5400 RPM HDD's

Dell XPS M1530 parts at Laptop Parts Expert website

Could you please check this out?



Ok, how do I tell?

As far as I can tell, laptoppartsexpert.com is OK.
http://www.resellerratings.com/store/Laptop_Parts_Expert

I don't know the maximum drive size that's supported by your motherboard. If you've read posts from people using 1TB drives in that model, a 1TB size should be fine. Unless you can find a reference to people using 2TB drives with that model, ordering a 2TB drive for it would be a risk.

Jenny, I did a google search and found this video of installing RAM and a 2 TB HDD in the Dell M1530 ***here***

Could you please check it out (and you too, Inland)?

From the logo on that HDD in this video, I think its a Seagate HDD.

So far as I'm aware the only limitation on SATA hard drives, as far as size is concerned, is the OS. All SATA controllers utilize 48 Bit LBA translation, and while there is a limit - no hard drives today even come close.

I just swapped out the hard drive on the Toshiba laptop, took me about 10 minutes to complete the hardware install. Reinstalling the OS was another story. I eventually settled on a fresh install using the restore discs. For whatever reason, the USB enclosure housing the old drive kept dropping power when I tried to clone it.

After it was up and running, the old drive remained attached and I was able to restore all of the data from it.

googled for places where they sell 9.5mm 2 TB laptop HDD's, but came up empty - I guess this guy in that video got his 2 TB HDD from an alien planet somewhere in outer space, maybe?



The only native OS in that laptop (M1530) I want in it is XP (32-bit), plus several VM's on older OS's (Dosbox, Win 98SE, Win 3.11, MS-DOS for some games that have problems on Dosbox)



I guess I'll just have to run PC Wizard on M1530 and report back to you?

Unless it's Windows XP SP1 (IIRC) it won't see the entire drive.

Well, when I install XP on the new 2 TB drive, I'm installing these service packs: SP_1a Express, SP_2 and SP_3. If I installed all these service packs, will XP see the whole drive then (I'm thinking as long as I install SP1 and all other packs, up to SP3, yes, it will see the whole drive)?

Is my assumption correct?

Since I'm going to install XP from that brown XP install disc I have, I'll probably have to use a partition utility to expand/join the partitions as when I wiped the HDD a month ago it only saw a ~100 GB partition, so I had to d/l a partition utility to fix this - am I correct about this?

Service packs are cumulative, there’s no need to do them in sequence. I would think that would work, worse case is you’d have to define a separate partition on the drive.

Make sure you have a slipstream disc to install from.

Ok - I'll go to you and Jenny100 for help with slipstreaming.

http://www.nliteos.com/guide/part1.html
http://www.nliteos.com/guide/part2.html
http://www.nliteos.com/guide/part3.html

As long as you know the difference between burning a disc from an image file and copying an image file to a disc there shouldn't be any problem.

Gee, maybe that's why my slipstreaming trick didn't work - I must've thought I was burning disc from image file when what I was really doing was copying this image file to the disc instead?

If so, what's the difference?

Image files are just that, ISO files. An ISO image can be opened with software (like Nero or Image Burn, etc...) and then written as a DVD (including Bootable DVD's).


Download Image Burn and create a bootable DVD, I went through this last night with my son's build. We finally got around to putting all the pieces together


Edit -

This defines what an image file is -

ISO Image Files

Ok, I just d/l ImgBurn v2.5.7.0.exe, actually it's SetupImgBurn. I understand this burns blu-ray iso images onto blu-ray discs, I think the version I d/l burns CD/DVD/DL DVD/BD - am I correct in assuming this?

Yep, it does all of that - the only thing it lacks is compression for those that use it.

Jenny, Inland, the drive Jenny linked me to at Newegg is a 1 TB max capacity drive. I did some searching a few weeks ago on google, I kept getting hits saying XP/M1530 goes up to 1 TB HDD, so I'm wondering if I go for this 1 TB drive Jenny linked me to, how many VM's, non-gaming software and games would you estimate I could fit on it without using up my HDD free space for the virtual RAM paging files (so as not to overload the PC)?

A few weeks or so ago I came across a website where some tech was discussing the disassembly of the Acer Aspire 5745G laptop and he said in that article that its RAM can go up to 16 GB max.

This is the article **here**

This tech is saying that to use 16 GB RAM I'll have to have a native 64 bit OS, and I believe I do - those Win 7 restore discs that I made when I first got the Acer.

Right now the Acer has 4 GB RAM, a 500 GB HDD, and I'd really like to upgrade it to 16 GB RAM and the biggest HDD it can take b/c I'd like to set it up as a dual boot with Win 7 and Win 8, after I put that Win 8 upgrade for $40 on my Xmas list among other computer stuff (new HDD's for the Dell and Acer laptops, new RAM for the Acer, and a new EHD).

Now that I got that pin out of my finger earlier today, as soon as my finger's all better, I'm going to fix up my office as a cool Star Trekky-type computer tech workshop and my bedroom as a cool Star Trekky-type computer game/book library, and once that's done I'll do all these hands-on exercises from my school books from the previous semesters (Fall '11 - Summer '12) plus start working on some of these "Dummies" computer books starting with MS-DOS, Win 3.x, etc (always wanted to get my hands wet with DOS, Win 3.xx, Win 95/98, etc), this is one of the reasons I took off from school for this whole year (Fall '12 - Summer '13) as I didn't have time to get into these while taking my online classes a year ago.

Do you agree with this tech in this article on the 16 GB max RAM for my Acer, Inland, Jenny?

And what type of RAM should I get for this?

What max HDD size should (for dual boot - Win 7 & 8) I get for this Acer?

My Acer is a 5745G, but I'm assuming its the same as this tech's Acer in this article. Am I correct in thinking this?

Thanks in advance.