Hello folks!
Can you help me out here please... my boss at work has asked me to look at her laptop which has no hard drive in it (long story) so can anyone please confirm what type would have been in it? i'm assuming from some googling that its a ata-100 5400rpm jobbie.. but being my boss i want to make sure i put the right one in :P
i'd much rather put a new one in for obvious reasons and will the fact that she has no "rescue" disk cause me any problems with the mystical Dell 3 partition malarkey??
i really dont like laptops, but i'm such a creep

Can you take a picture of the connection? Or find one on google images that matches it?

That way we can tell you for sure what hard disk you need to tell her to get. Should get you some brownie points.

You will be able to use the 1 partition. (Or with newer versions of windows it auto-creates a system partition too) Usually manufacturers create a recovery partition too, but its not needed (if this is what you mean?)

At the very least tell us what make and model the laptop is.

oh yeah lol!
its a dell inspiron 1300... doh
will take a picture of the connections in a bit

-------------------merged post:


sorted, the old drive turned up...a samsung MP0402H ide! got one off ebay for £25 new :)
thanks for your help guys, hopefully i can just throw windows on and hey presto...

Make sure you have the adapter for the mini 80 pin IDE to to the proprietary Dell Slot in the laptop.


This is the best image I could find of it.
It plugs into the mini 80 pin IDE at the back of the drive and gives you a flat blade style connector for the drive to plug into the laptop.
If you have the old drive it is probably still attached to the back of it. You will need to transfer it, the new drive will not come with it.

ok will check that when the new drive gets here, thanks :)

Carfull with it too. I've bent so many hard disk pins using these bloody things...

^^^ so its not just me then!

No! Last thing you want when trying to recover data is to screw the disk up even more

fitted and working fine, no bent pins or adaptors
thats some brownine points for me!
thanks again for the advice stonehenge and scorcher

You are very welcome. Glad to hear all went well thanks for checking back in with us with the update.