Large Drive Support Dimension 4550 [Dell]

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From: ChuckP on 11 Feb 2010 18:28

I have a Dell Dimension 4550 with an 80gb drive. I would like to replace it
with a larger drive (350GB). This will be a clean reinstall.

My recovery disk does not have SP1 on board. My intent is to...
1) format a 130GB partition on the new drive
2) install Xp from recovery disk
3) apply updates to bring XP to sp3.
4) resize the partition to the full drive with EASUS or Partition magic etc.
5) reload all the pictures, videos and music which have forced this move.

Current BIOS is A01, is there a real need to flash the latest A08 BIOS to
get LBA support?

Had a thought to resize partition to 8-10gb and then allocate remaining
space to a second partition.

Comments? Warnings?

Thanks

Chuck

From: Daddy on 11 Feb 2010 18:51

From: Brian K on 11 Feb 2010 19:29

"ChuckP" <drucelakexxxx(a)yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:hl23rr$tvc$1(a)news.eternal-september.org...
>I have a Dell Dimension 4550 with an 80gb drive. I would like to replace
>it with a larger drive (350GB). This will be a clean reinstall.
>
> My recovery disk does not have SP1 on board. My intent is to...
> 1) format a 130GB partition on the new drive
> 2) install Xp from recovery disk
> 3) apply updates to bring XP to sp3.
> 4) resize the partition to the full drive with EASUS or Partition magic
> etc.
> 5) reload all the pictures, videos and music which have forced this move.
>
> Current BIOS is A01, is there a real need to flash the latest A08 BIOS to
> get LBA support?
>
> Had a thought to resize partition to 8-10gb and then allocate remaining
> space to a second partition.
>
> Comments? Warnings?
>

Chuck,

My approach would be

update the BIOS
clone the old HD to your new HD with CopyWipe for DOS (Straight Copy method)
install SP3
resize the OS to your desired size (remember the free space in the partition
will be larger when you move your videos and music to the data partition)
create a data partition in the remaining space

This way you don't have to reinstall your drivers, updates or apps. It will
save a lot of time.

From: Christopher Muto on 11 Feb 2010 19:48

ChuckP wrote:
> I have a Dell Dimension 4550 with an 80gb drive. I would like to
> replace it with a larger drive (350GB). This will be a clean reinstall.
>
> My recovery disk does not have SP1 on board. My intent is to...
> 1) format a 130GB partition on the new drive
> 2) install Xp from recovery disk
> 3) apply updates to bring XP to sp3.
> 4) resize the partition to the full drive with EASUS or Partition magic
> etc.
> 5) reload all the pictures, videos and music which have forced this move.
>
> Current BIOS is A01, is there a real need to flash the latest A08 BIOS
> to get LBA support?
>
> Had a thought to resize partition to 8-10gb and then allocate remaining
> space to a second partition.
>
> Comments? Warnings?
>
> Thanks
>
> Chuck

first, you need to ask yourself how much time and money you want to
invest in this relatively old machine. not sure if you have a spare
360gb drive laying around or if you are considering purchasing one...
they are expensive these days relative to the more common sata type
drives used in todays computers (a bare 360gb pata or a 750gb sata each
cost about $80). there is nothing wrong with repairing an old machine
other than it can sometimes put you well on the way to the cost of new
and at the end of the day, so to speak, you still have an old computer...
second, if you are considering a large hard disk upgrade then you would
be well served by first installing the latest bios version a08. i think
it was in version a04 that they implemented support for drives over
137gb. a08 is inclusive of all the prior updates.
other comments... if your current installation of windows and all its
applications and data are in tact you could clone the current 80gb drive
to a new drive and then reposition the new drive as the primary drive in
the system. your old pre sp1 dell windows xp cd can be a problem
installing on a large drive and though there is a way to slipstream sp3
into a fresh install i think you would be better off if you purchase one
of the more recent dell recovery disks on ebay for under $10. finally,
instead of all of this effort you could consider simply purchasing a
500gb usb external hard disk like a lacie for under $100 and simply plug
it in and go. it might not be the fastest given the internal usb 1
interface but you can buy a usb 2 PCI card for $10 is necessary. this
is by far the simplest way to add storage space to your existing machine
as well as make it easy to move all of your data to your new machine
when that time comes.

From: dg1261 on 11 Feb 2010 20:08

"ChuckP" <drucelakexxxx(a)yahoo.com> wrote in
news:hl23rr$tvc$1(a)news.eternal-september.org:

> I have a Dell Dimension 4550 with an 80gb drive. I would
> like to replace it with a larger drive (350GB). This will
> be a clean reinstall.
>
> [...]
>
> Had a thought to resize partition to 8-10gb and then
> allocate remaining space to a second partition.

I always prefer the latter option, regardless. With a 350GB disk I'd
recommend making the OS partition around 25-40GB. But some people seem
to like a single, ultra-large partition, which is just a matter of
personal preference.

The key issue will be whether the 4550 bios supports 48-bit LBA. (I
don't know if it does, or what improvements the bios updates provide--at
one time you used to be able to find a simple readme.txt on the Dell site
that listed that, but Dell continually "improves" their site to take out
useful information like that.)

If your bios does not support 48-bit LBA, you should keep your entire OS
partition below the 137GB boundary.

Yes, XP SP1+ supports 48-bit addressing and will be able to use the disk
space above 137GB, but the problem is XP still needs the bios driver to
begin booting. During the earliest stages of the boot process XP needs
to read files via the bios driver, and then switches to using the Windows
driver. If the bios driver cannot see beyond 137GB, it will still work
as long as the files the beginning stages need are below 137GB. But
Windows constantly rewrites files, so sooner or later something the
beginning boot process needs could migrate to the upper part of the
partition, and then subsequent boot attempts will fail. The solution is
to keep the entire boot partition below 137GB so that nothing the boot
process needs can migrate out of reach of the bios driver.

Note this is only an issue if the 4550 bios does not support 48-bit LBA
addressing. If it does, then your plan to install XP on a sub-137GB
partition and later resize it will work fine.

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