Dell M90 Hardrive Upgrade

I have a Dell M90. With 2 gb of ram and a 100GB harddrive. I'm looking to upgrade the internal hardrive. I'm wondering if it is possible to upgrade it to the new 300 gb hitatchi 2,5" drive. It is sata 300 and the dell m90 is sata 150. I understand this will work allright. But i was told by a Dell representative that the max M90 capacity was 160gb (and that it HAD to be a dell drive) does this make sense? Does that mean I cannot upgrade my drive unless it is a dell 160 gb drive? Thank you all in advance!

 

Which CPU ?
I think it has the 945PM/ICH7M.

And which HDD - SATA/IDE ? If SATA, you can install any 2.5" (probably 9.5mm only) SATA HDD. If IDE, 250GB is the limit.

 

I really don't know too much about computer specs. I do know it has a SATA drive. Sata-150 (100 gb) Right now. Does the cpu make a difference to what it can handle? If it is sata can I replace the 100 gb for the 300 gb?

 

The CPU would help me know about the chipset specs.

There are a couple of 300GB HDDs by Toshiba probably, but 320GB HDDs are more mainstream, and the new 7200RPM HDDs are fast and cheap.

Weird, Dell says 160GB is the limit.

 

Unless there is a special setup that I don't know of (which I don't think is the case - you can try looking in the device manager for some weird hardware), I don't think the rep knew what he/she was talking about. He/she was probably looking at some outdated chart.

 

Like I said in the other thread, the rep was probably looking at some old outdated chart, since, M90 is an old, two generations back of the precision line.

 

How can I find the CPU model? Do you thing then that a larger HD than 160 would work? I mean the M90 is pretty new I bought about a year ago. Why would 160 gb be the limit?

 

Well, the 160GB limit could be true if the BIOS had a limitation on the drives capacity (highly unlikely since the laptop supports 48 bit LBA addressing since the "max" drive is over 137GB), and you should be able to use any SATA I or II (150 or 300) 2.5" drive. They are probably telling you to buy a Dell drive either because they want your money or their hard drive has a critical implementation with the "Strikezone" or whatever it is. I believe that you won't have any problems upgrading your drive (no guarantees, though) If your laptop truly only supports 160GB drives, the drive will probably work fine but you will only see 160GB of it. Good Luck.

-J.B.

 

HDD limits are rare, and are mainly enforced through the BIOS.
You can find out about your CPU in Device Manager > Processors or Start > Run > Msinfo32.

I have a notebook with the same chipset as the M90, and I'm running a 320GB 5400RPM HDD.

 

You mean I will be able to see only 160 GB, but be able to use the whole 300 gb for example?