Dell Dimension 4600 Hard Drive Upgrade

ctsufer31 

You can use any currently available IDE hard drive, providing you have XP SP1 or higher and not XP with a SP-1+ upgrade.

Bev.

Bev,

I've given some thought to this as well. I purchased my 4600 with XP Home, SP1, according to the Dell packing list.  I've since installed all Windows Updates, and currently running SP3.  Can you confirm that a large (500GB+) second IDE HD would be supported.  My thought would be to simply add the second HD on the existing IDE ribbon cable, in the middle position, using the CS jumper setting to set it as the "slave". 

Thanks much.

~Ed

Hey shrimpo,

I've seen where the 500GB drive is the primary drive, but not the slave drive. However I would not think there would be an issue with getting the 500GB drive to work. If it doesn't work, get the newest BIOS update from Dell & then try again. I think it will though.

Thanks for the feedback.  I actually just remembered that I have an existing 320GB WD drive in a third party external enclosure (INOI brand) that I took out of service a few months back that might work for this.  The drive was beginning to act a little odd, however, but I don't know if it was the drive itself or the enclosure.  Upon power-up, it sounded as if it was trying to spin up, repeatedly, over several minutes time span.  After a few minutes, it would finally spin up and worked flawlessly.  Does that sound like the drive itself or the enclosure, or hard to tell?  If the drive itself is good, it would be very adequate as a second HD.

TIA...

~Ed

It could have been the enclosure not getting power to the HDD properly. I've seen HDDs take a few seconds to kick on right & work before. One of my Fujitsu drives that I put into an Antec does that on occasion actually.

The way to tell for sure is to put it into the tower & power it up. Leave the case open & put your hand on the side of the HDD to see if it's having problems getting power. As if it spins up & slows down again before finally acting normal.

Bev, I've given some thought to this as well. I purchased my 4600 with XP Home, SP1, according to the Dell packing list.  I've since installed all Windows Updates, and currently running SP3.  Can you confirm that a large (500GB+) second IDE HD would be supported.  My thought would be to simply add the second HD on the existing IDE ribbon cable, in the middle position, using the CS jumper setting to set it as the "slave".  Thanks much. ~Ed

Shrimpo

Ed.

The 500gb IDE should work fine as the secondary, providing you are using XP SP-1, or higher, connect the second hard drive to the middle connector of the primary IDE data cable and check that the jumpers are set to 'Cable Select' [CS] that Dell uses for IDE drives.

After the physical installation of the hard drive, check the system setup, to see that the hard drive is enabled [on] and in order for windows to recognize the second hard drive, it must be partitioned and formatted, using XP Disk Management.

 SYSTEM SETUP. <ADMIN NOTE: Broken link has been removed from this post by Dell>

THESEare generic instructions for installing an additional hard drive using Windows XP Disk Management, they are by Seagate, but apply to all makes.

Bev.

At this point, since I have a 300GB WD IDE drive, I'd like to see if will work (see comments in earlier post concerning odd behavior in an INOI external enclosure).  Beyond that, I might give SATA a shot.  Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that I would need a MOLEX -> SATA power adapter and a SATA data cable to connect the drive to the motherboard.  Beyond that, SATA would need to be enabled in the BIOS, then formatted/partitioned.  Correct?

Also, what, exactly, are the advantages of SATA over IDE...faster data rate?...lower power consumption? (might be beneficial, due to what all I'm running from the original Dell PSU...two optical drives, HDD, X800XT video card)

Thanks!

~Ed

Why not move to SATA?

Depending on what you use it for SATA drives have faster through-put than IDE. But if all you're doing is mainly internet with some word docs, email, simple things like that then I can't see it really being worth it to you. Power draw is lower on SATA but not significantly so.

At this point, since I have a 300GB WD IDE drive, I'd like to see if will work (see comments in earlier post concerning odd behavior in an INOI external enclosure).  Beyond that, I might give SATA a shot.  Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that I would need a MOLEX -> SATA power adapter and a SATA data cable to connect the drive to the motherboard.  Beyond that, SATA would need to be enabled in the BIOS, then formatted/partitioned.  Correct?   Also, what, exactly, are the advantages of SATA over IDE...faster data rate?...lower power consumption? (might be beneficial, due to what all I'm running from the original Dell PSU...two optical drives, HDD, X800XT video card) Thanks! ~Ed

SATA is cheaper on a per-unit-of-storage basis and doesn't require the bulky, airflow-restricting IDE ribbon cable. You could buy a huge SATA drive and simply retire your old IDE unit instead of pairing up two drives.

The SATA cable and power adapter can be sourced along with the drive and shouldn't be that expensive.

Ran across this statement in another forum:

"Dell contacted me on a follow up. They say the maximum TOTAL HDD storage in the A12 BIOS on the Dimension 4600 is 250G. Either a Single Drive or a combination of IDE DRIVES can't exceed 250G storage. When the 160G drive arrived, I installed it leaving the 80G XP-SP3 bootable HDD also in the machine. The 160G drive was recognized and fully useable. (80 +160 < 250). This appears to be the IDE drive limit. SATA would be a different story."

Any comment concerning A12 BIOS only supporting 250GB total?

Thx.

Not sure, but I don't think this is correct.  I have a 4600 with the A12 BIOS and it had one 160GB hard drive and one 200GB hard drive for a total of 360GBs.  Both were IDE when I bought it used for a whopping $40 and it was working correctly and both were recognized.   However, I replaced both with one 320GB SATA drive and it works fine.  I really didn't keep the other two IDE hard drives in long enough to give any more input other than to see both identified in the system.   

***UPDATE***

I just finished installing the 300GB WD IDE drive that came from the external enclosure.  Installation, partition, and format were all nominal and it is working perfectly.   Thanks to all for your assistance.

~Ed

Ed.

Happy to hear the upgrade went well. 

So much for Dell's nonsence about the Dimension 4600 supporting only 250gb of storage.  LOL.

Bev.

Glad to be of assistance Shrimpo! If you need help in the future, please don't hesitate to ask us here in the community.