e6400 hard drive replacement

I want a 7200 500GB drive in the E6400 that I plan to purchase.
Dell doesnt offer a drive this big.
These drives are quite cheap these days. So i will get the the E6400 with an 80GB and swap it out with an aftermarket 7200 500GB.
Im hoping to use the OS disk that comes with the machine to install Vista on the new drive.
Did anyone do also do this?
did you run into any problems?
Please share the Aftermarket drive you went with.
Thanks

 

The OEM licensed Vista that you get with the machine will not refuse to install or activate if you exchange the harddrive. Should you be using XP you will, however, either need to clone the drive or have to already have another XP professional disc lying around, for Microsoft doesn't allow OEMs to give out XP discs to their customers anymore. What you are really buying when you buy an XP laptop is a Vista license with the right to downgrade to XP, which Dell already did for you.
You will not need to re-activate XP just because the harddisk changed.

For my old and new drives, see my signature.

Edit: Added XP, too.

 

Upgrading the HDD is very easy. I've gone from 160GB to 320GB to 500GB.

I use the cloning method as described here, because Dell didn't give me an XP reinstallation disc.

John

 

Seems to be a crapshot with this XP disk... Dell did give me an XP disk with my original E6400, and it did give my friend an XP disk with his E6400 as well. More recently, a relative of mine who bought a new E6400 also got an XP disk, and it was finally with SP3 as well.

That being said, XP installation on my E6400 was arguably easier than that on my old D830; no problems whatsoever aside from the usual SATA/ATA shenanigans.

 

Huh, so the Dell XP reinstallation CD isn't slipstreamed with SATA drivers?

 

nope.... it's not

 

wow, that's useless of them.

 

It seems the best way to do it is to clone the drive to avoid issues with OS installation. I know that my M1330 last year came with quite a bit of bloatware and i preferred to reinstall the OS.
How clean is the installation that comes with the E6400 (bloatware wise)
XP or Vista? Is it still preferencial to reinstall the OS anyway.

 

The nearest the E6400 has to bloatware can be the Dell ControlPoint Connection Manager and Security Manager software. I'm not sure if they are installed by default but, if you don't need their functionality, then remove them.

John

 

the only bloatware i had when i got my e6400 on vista business was the DCP and the DVD uitility. which i just uninstalled. installed registry booster and it was fine. then updated the bios and other drivers from the site