[shoover56]

Hi

I have a Compaq Presario 5000, and my hard drive kind of got fried and needs to be replaced.

My hard drive is a Maxtor 4D040H2 (the model number)

I was just wondering if i could either/or

A. Get instructions on replacing the hard drive w/another
B. Use a different type of hard drive as the primary.



THX

[sleepnmojo]

Aren't A and B the same option?

I would say yes. You should be able to replace the HD. Depending on how old the computer is, you may be limited on size. If it is newer, I wouldn't worry about it, and you can find HDs that are less than 50 cents per gig. My best advice would be to read the manual that comes with your computer. It should show you how to replace the hard drive. If you don't trust yourself, find a 13 year old kid to do it, or a computer repair shop.

[puntoMX]

Replace it with any drive you want. If your computer is not "seeing" the drive at the full capacity, then use the drive manufacturer software to make the computer "see" the drive well. Most of the time you can download installation instructions too. If you buy a "boxed" or "retailed" drive, you will have a new cable (not all brands), the software, instructions manual, 5.25" brackets (not all brands) and of course the drive it self in one box .

Take a ATA100/133 7200rpm 2 to 8MB cache drive, you will be suprised how much faster your computer will be. I prefer Seagate now, they are fast, queit and reliable...

[Zxian]

Look in the hardware section here... I just bought a new Seagate drive.

My motherboard is fairly old, so in BIOS, I only see a 136GB drive, but when I get into Windows, all is well, and I can access the whole drive.

From what little I've used it so far, the new drive is great!

Seagate Barracuda 7200.8
200GB
7200 RPM
8MB cache
ATA100/133

It took a bit of work getting it working right, but it's worth it in the end! Boot times halfed for me... I guess I know where my bottleneck was!