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Upgrading my inspiron 6400

Started by Teenage.Zombiee , Apr 03 2012 07:39 AM

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5 replies to this topic

#1 Teenage.Zombiee

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Posted 03 April 2012 - 07:39 AM

Hi everyone. I'm looking to upgrade my RAM & HD for my Dell Inspiron 6400.
I currently have 2x 512MB DDR2 ram installed which I will be replacing with 2x 1GB DDR2 ram. My HD is a Fujitsu 74GB IDE drive which I was hoping to replace with a 500GB Seagate 'Momentus' which brings me to a couple of questions.

1. Can I install a SATA HD instead of IDE ? If so, should I bother ?
2. When I was did a search in regards to upgrading the HD, I read something about I may have some upgrade restrictions depending if the BIOS supports LBA or LBA 48. Could someone shed some light on this ?

Thanks in advance :thumbup2:

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#2 killerx525

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Posted 03 April 2012 - 10:08 AM

If it is IDE, then you can't install a SATA hard drive because they are both different interface. I'm not to sure about this LBA but as far as i know, you pop the hard drive in and it should work. If you wanted to upgrade the IDE drive to a larger capacity, it would be costly and it would be hard to find nowadays especially the 2.5" models which is needed. You can look on Ebay for one. The ram upgrade should be fine and a nice little boost. Since your based in W.A, you can buy ram from MSY which there is only 2 branches - Balcatta and Cannington.
>Michael
System: CPU- AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition Oc'ed to 3.8GHz, CPU Cooler- Noctua NH-D14, RAM- G.Skill Ripjaws X F3-12800CL9D-8GBXL 8GB Kit(4Gx2) DDR3 1600MHz, HDD- Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB, GPU- 2x Asus 6950 1GB Crossfire 850/1250MHz, Motherboard- Gigabyte 990FXA-D3, Case- Coolermaster HAF 932, PSU- Corsair TX-750 V2, Soundcard- Realtek High Definition Audio Sound, OS- Windows 8 Pro 64-Bit
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#3 Teenage.Zombiee

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Posted 04 April 2012 - 10:05 AM

Apparently the model of inspiron I have uses SATA drives but for some reason in EVEREST it is showing up as IDE, I'll look further into this. I'm actually from Western Sydney, and we have some good suppliers in our area. Also, I did some more searching into performing the hard drive upgrade , and I haven't seen anything else about LBA issues, so I might be all good. Thank you for your response :clapping:

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#4 killerx525

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Posted 04 April 2012 - 11:16 AM

Please follow the link below as it will get the specifications of your computer.
Publish a Snapshot using Speccy
>Michael
System: CPU- AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition Oc'ed to 3.8GHz, CPU Cooler- Noctua NH-D14, RAM- G.Skill Ripjaws X F3-12800CL9D-8GBXL 8GB Kit(4Gx2) DDR3 1600MHz, HDD- Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB, GPU- 2x Asus 6950 1GB Crossfire 850/1250MHz, Motherboard- Gigabyte 990FXA-D3, Case- Coolermaster HAF 932, PSU- Corsair TX-750 V2, Soundcard- Realtek High Definition Audio Sound, OS- Windows 8 Pro 64-Bit
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#5 DJBPace07

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Posted 04 April 2012 - 05:12 PM

This is a bit strange. This is the computer you have at Dell's site, I think. I didn't find anything that said explicitly what HDD you use. But this, this, and this seem to indicate that you use a SATA drive. It is entirely possible that your monitoring software is misreading the drive.
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#6 killerx525

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Posted 04 April 2012 - 08:02 PM

Unfortunately there is multiple models of the Inspiron 6400. The best way to be certain about it, is by taking out the current hard drive and checking if it is SATA or IDE.
>Michael
System: CPU- AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition Oc'ed to 3.8GHz, CPU Cooler- Noctua NH-D14, RAM- G.Skill Ripjaws X F3-12800CL9D-8GBXL 8GB Kit(4Gx2) DDR3 1600MHz, HDD- Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB, GPU- 2x Asus 6950 1GB Crossfire 850/1250MHz, Motherboard- Gigabyte 990FXA-D3, Case- Coolermaster HAF 932, PSU- Corsair TX-750 V2, Soundcard- Realtek High Definition Audio Sound, OS- Windows 8 Pro 64-Bit
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