I'd try trolling EBay for a replacement drive before going to Dell and
paying full price. You should be able to find a suitable 20 - 40GB drive
for
a reasonable price, and be back up and running in short order.

My Dell 8000 uses a standard 2.5" HDD with an adapter plug (the plug just
pulls
off once the drive is out of the computer). You'll need to remove the drive
from
its carrier (4 small Philips-head screws), then pull off the adapter plug.
At
this point, you should be able to compare the old drive and the new drive
for
size, pinout, jumpering, etc. The laptop drives I've worked with have been
remarkably similar and quite interchangeable. In fact, I'm currently using
a
spare 2.5" laptop drive as the C: drive on one of my desktop computers,
connected
with an adapter I got from Cyberguys. It's been there for several months
and
works just fine.

Good luck,
Mike Brown,
Oakland, CA


Original message:
> Date:    Sun, 13 Apr 2003 17:23:20 +1200
> From:    Ian <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Re: dying Dell Inspiron 3500 laptop
>
> Michael, thanks for the link to the Dell docs.  I HAD downloaded the
manual
> from elsewhere but read it hastily and completely missed the part that
shows
> how to remove the HDD, which turned out to be extremely simple.
>
> However, now I need to find a replacement drive.  I doubt if there'll be
any
> here in New Zealand - Dell pulled out of here a couple of years back.
Any
> suggestions about where I should look?
>
> Ian Porter
> Computer Guys Inc.
> Arrowtown
> New Zealand
> [log in to unmask]

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