Dell Inspiron 8200 question

Hi All,
I was given a 5yr old Dell Inspiron 8200 with the following hardware
2.5 GHZ P4-M
(2) gigs of RAM
64 Meg video card a GForce Go

I was told that the machine "works fine" however it came from a company the does not allow there hard drive to just be wiped they need to be returned to their corporate office...it use to have a 7200 RPM 80 gig IDE drive in it
I wanted to replace it with the same drive but I can't find one anywhere

Does anyone where I can find one or what 5400 RPM drive is a good alternate ????

Also will a 160 gig drive work in this laptop ??

Thanks....shkj

 

A 160GB drive will work in the 8200. I'd recommend the Samsung HM160HC which K-TRON reviews here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=264209. You might also consider a PATA SSD if you swing that way.

 

Drives over 137 gig are not supported for the I8200 and officially I think the limit is 100GB, but some folk have got 160GB drives to work. There can be problems.

The BIOS must be flashed to a recent version and if you're using XP, SP2 is the oldest version of the OS that can see past 137 so you might have problems installing off an old XP disc. Even then you might have to use additional software to see the full drive. When I last replaced the drive in mine, 120GB was the best value, so I didn't investigate this problem too deeply.

It will take 12.5mm drives. I put a 9.5 mm Fujitsu in mine; the previous Toshiba and IBM drives didn't last well. Commander Wolf's recommended Samsung is a good drive and the kind of thing I'd use if I needed another, but I'd research potential problems first.

I hope you've still got the drive caddy!