It may be that a newer notebook comes with a Serial ATA drive, instead of 
the older Parallel ATA (EIDE) drive that you are use to seeing.  This may be 
why it won't fit in your USB external drive case.  On the other hand, this 
may allow you to hook it up directly to the motherboard of your desktop PC, 
if it also has SATA drive connectors available.

Probably Google will the best way to find some pictures of these different 
types of connectors to help you recognize them, but the drive should also 
say whether it is a SATA or an EIDE drive somewhere on the label.

This suggestion is in addition to what has already been offered that perhaps 
you are looking at the adapter installed on the drive to allow it to mate 
with the laptop's drive bay.

You may be able to find more information on the Dell web site for your 
particular laptop, which might be of help with figuring this out, too.  They 
usually have pretty good service information available.

John Sproule

------ Original Message Below -------

Date:    Mon, 8 Feb 2010 19:11:54 -0000
From:    John Clemence <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Changing a hard drive

Thank you very much to all who replied to my question - I have got some good
advice - the only problem is I have just discovered that the Dell hard drive
is different to other laptop drives and does not seem to fit in my hard
drive dock!

                         PCBUILD's List Owners:
                      Bob Wright<[log in to unmask]>
                        Mark Rode<[log in to unmask]>