Replacing a hard drive in a dell inspiron.

[I Shooter]

I have a 17 year old dell 3800 Inspiron. When I was still working I used it for Auto CAD. It has auto CAD 2000 installed. It being 17 years old I am loosing the hard drive. It isn't wanting to boot up and I have found that the easy way to be able to use it is to tell it to hibernate when I want to turn it off. So far so good. Everything is still working.

What I want to do is replace the hard drive. I have called Dell and was told to get a new computer. I explained that I had a new computer and CAD 2000 will not load on it. It tells me to get a newer version of cad. That goes for around $3000 and I don't have that sort of money to spend on CAD. What I need is information on what hard drive will work in the Inspiron. Teck support at Dell told me to take it to a repair shop and they would replace it for me. I explained that all I needed was the information on what hard drive it would take and was told that he didn't have that information. Take it to a repair shop.

Talks like that stopped me from buying Dell stuff and building my own computers.

So my question is how do I find out what hard drive I need to order. Is it sata 2 or 3. Will a sata 3 work if it has only support for sata 2? It is also my understanding that they are different sizes of 2.5" hard drives. some are thicker than others. Will a solid state drive work in it? I would go with one of them if it would work. The hard drive that came with it is only 10 GB so a 60GB would be a monster for this lap top.

Thank you much for any help you can offer.

[BC_Programmer]

SATA versions are forward and backward compatible. However, that isn't going to be an issue in this instance because - at least from what I can find- the laptop doesn't use SATA. It uses a 44-pin Laptop EIDE Drive.

Unfortunately, these are not manufactured anymore, so sourcing a new replacement could be difficult, but not impossible, and may have a premium since being discontinued means demand is outstripping supply. getting a used drive is of course something of a gamble, too.

There is a sort of "underground" of users who keep systems of these vintage, and older, running and mixing them together with modern devices to get the best out of them. In this case, one option sometimes used is a CompactFlash adapter. here. In fact, I have this very device in front of me right now. Effectively, what it does is allows you to use a CompactFlash card as a Hard Disk.

The astute observer might notice that since it's in front of me, it clearly isn't in a computer. Well- it turns out there are a bunch of little niggles and caveats with them that can cause issues. If you don't select the right CF Card, you can have issues involving it identifying itself as a removable drive, preventing certain things from working- These are the issues I encountered myself.

If you want to "clone" the existing install, that may prove difficult either way, because you need a way to use cloning tools while both drives are available- and their 44-pin laptop only EIDE interface presents a challenge. Another issue with that approach is that- at leasat as I recall- Autocad 2000's anti-piracy measures use the Hard Drive serial number information, so it wouldn't run on the new drive if cloned (but you can reinstall it).

[strollin]

You should be able to replace it with any 2.5" IDE (PATA) HDD.  There are plenty of refurbished drives available on Amazon or other sites.  I saw prices as low as $15.  There are 2 different thicknesses, older drives were 12.5mm thick while newer drives were 9mm thick.  Due to the age of your laptop, it's likely that your laptop's current drive is 12.5mm.  In that case, you can use either thickness. 

In order to clone the drive you'll need an adapter similar to this:  https://www.amazon.com/TechIntheBox-Adapter-Converter-Optical-External/dp/B075YVPNYF/ref=sr_1_10?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1526559289&sr=1-10&keywords=ide+to+usb+adapter.  The USB port on your laptop is only version 1.1 so data transfer will be slwo between the 2 drives.

I personally wouldn't bother with trying to find an IDE SDD or the CompactFlash adapter.  Although IDE SDDs are manufactured, they are relatively expensive.  The CompactFlash adapter would probably be a little too finicky for you.  I've used the CF adapters on really old computers that used MFM drives which haven't been manufactures for quite a few years.  They worked great for that use but I wouldn't use one if an appropriate HDD was available.

[I Shooter]

Thanks much for the information. I will order the ide drive and let you know how it goes. As far as cloning the new drive I had planed to just load all the programs on it just like I would do with a new build. Is there a reason to clone the drive?

As I said above. Thanks much for all the help. Why couldn't Dell just give me the same information. They did build the unit.

[strollin]

Cloning would preserve the OS and all installed programs and data but, provided you have all the install disks, a fresh install of the OS and re-installation of your programs is the best way to do it.  Make sure to backup all of your data before hand.

[Computer_Commando]

When I still used AutoCAD, was able to get it installed using Compatibility Mode.  We still have an old Dell Latitude running Windows 2000, it never gets connected to the internet.  Recently cloned IDE (PATA) drive using a desktop computer & two IDE/SATA to USB adapters.  It will not work if the original drive has Ontrack installed or some other low level drive manager.  These were used to get drives larger than 32GB to work with a BIOS that supported up to 32GB.

[I Shooter]

Hi all.
I just wanted to let you know how it all worded out. I now have Auto CADD 2000 working on my newer lap top, five years old Toshiba with Windows 7.

I down loaded from windows virtual PC and Windows XP immolator. That allowed me to load Auto CADD on to the virtual PC. It all works. The best part is it didn't cost me anything and it works. So now I can use the Dell till it dies and don't have to worry about it. I don't have to spend $140 on a new old tec hard drive. All is good in my world. You all have a great day.  Thank you all very much for your help.