The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Like other brands, Dell doesn't use only one brand of hard drive, they use whatever is out there.
However, if you order the 7200RPM units, then it's either going to be a Hitachi or Seagate, they are the only manufacturers that produce 7200's.
They use different HDDs for different models, so I don't think we could tell you exactly which one you'll be getting.
Second, yes you can format completely. They will send you the XP disc since you are getting one of the premium systems.
Third, yes you can transfer the software over as long as your laptop meets the requirements. The only thing you'll have to worry about with the software would be the license agreements.
You can just go to the device manager, and it will tell you the HD brand. As for the format, most tools don't detect HPA or at least most users haven't had any luck. There have been a few though. I know someone did it on the Format Questions thread, so you might check out the last few pages of that thread.
You can use the Hitachi Feature Tool or the Seagate Disc Wizard to get rid of the HPA (preferably the one that matches the drive brand). There's no need to "low-level format" the drive if you remove the HPA and delete all the partitions. (All it will do it overwrite it with 0s, which is meaningless unless you're trying to conceal the data that was there previously.)
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.
