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How Do I Open the Plastice Case of My Computer?
Hello,
I am replacing the Hard Drive in an old Dimension XPS R450 computer. I know how to open one side of the Case, but I am at a loss on how to get access to the other side . Therefore I can't get to the screws on the other side of the Hard Drive so I can take the drive out
. What am I missing? Thank you for any help.
volcano11
28K Posts
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August 11th, 2004 21:00
You don't take off the other side of the case. You unscrew one screw that holds in the drive cage and you slide out the whole drive cage. See the following:
http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/dkhan/removing.htm#Procedures
Steve
garyft
24 Posts
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August 12th, 2004 13:00
The hard drive on these systems is mounted in a vertical position at the bottom front of the system. Are you replacing the primary hard drive or the secondary hard drive?
ianmeister
38 Posts
0
August 12th, 2004 19:00
Steve,
Thank you very much! That Link has invaluable information!
Ian
ianmeister
38 Posts
0
August 12th, 2004 20:00
I had written out a very detailed account of my installation but for some reason I lost it all (I think it was because I was not signed in). Oh well. I will try again...
The hard drive I replaced was in the Secondary Drive position, not in the card guide assembly. I read the documentation on the removal of the primary hard drive from the card guide assembly, but I am afraid it left me somewhat confused. For one thing, the two long screws which attach to the drive from the front are missing in my machine. So, since I didn't have all the equipment to properly secure the drive in the card guide assembly (and I wasn't exactly sure how to do it anyway), I looked to install it elsewhere.
I looked at the secondary position for the hard drive but the original drive did not look very secure in that position either. Perhaps there were pieces missing from it as well. Therefore I looked at the drive cage as the place to put it.
The drive cage houses a DVD-ROM on top followed by a CD-ROM, an open space, and then an IOMEGA ZIP drive. Prior to moving anything I updated the BIOS to the latest version (A13) available on Dell's website for my particular board. I then removed the drive cage and managed to sandwich the new hard drive in between the CD-ROM and ZIP drives.
Now the original owner had incorrectly configured either the BIOS or the hardware as he had set the hard drive as the Master in BIOS but it was on the Slave position on the interface cable. I think that may be the reason the hard drive clicked all the time when it was processing.
I set the Hard Drive as Master and ZIP drive as slave on the Primary IDE cable, and the DVD-ROM as Master and the CD-ROM as Slave on the Secondary cable. I jumpered each device accordingly.
When I powered on the machine and went into the BIOS, it recognized my configuration including my new Western Digital hard drive. However I am having difficulty setting up/partitioning the drive because I can't get the machine to boot from either the CD or the Boot Diskette I made from the CD. I do have the computer set to boot 1st from the Floppy, 2nd from the CD, and 3rd from the Hard Drive, yet it keeps going into "Caldera DR-DOS," does some stuff, and exits to the "X" Drive. I will call WD tech support to help me out with that.
Please feel free to comment on my installation especially if I did some major NO-NOs which might blow something out. Thank you very much!!