T500 HDD replacement questions (and setting up dual-boot)

[Arf the Lab]

Hello, all.

I've some questions about working with larger HDDs on the T500. Any help appreciated.

Is it possible to replace the stock 320GB HDD with a 1TB or 2TB HDD? And if so do I need to buy a specific brand / part #?

Do y'all feel it would be worthwhile to install Windows 7 on this machine, in addition to XP Pro? I currently have no interest in running 7, but it may be helpful for me to at least get accustomed to it [?].

Furthermore the largest HDD I've ever formatted and installed multiple OSes on was well under 500GB. And even then it was 98SE and XP, not XP and something else. I admit I'm a bit behind the times, not having dealt with all things newer & larger. Can someone share some good info on formatting and partitioning a 1TB+ HDD from, say, the XP boot+install disc? I'm worried about running into formatting & allocation size issues, as I've heard XP can only handle a certain amount of GB. (And I wish for XP to be the primary OS installed on the machine.)

Thanks in advance.

[jayton4]

Points to consider:

-T500 supports 2.5" SATA hard drives with a maximum height of 9.5mm.

-The largest capacity drive in 9.5mm is a 1TB, the 1.5TB and 2TB drives are 15mm and will not fit

-You do not have to pick a specific brand or part number with the T500

-Windows XP supports a maximum of 2TB, so no limitations there

-Hard drives made today are Advanced Format (AF) drives with a sector size of 4KB instead of 512bytes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_format)

-The Windows XP boot+install disc will not be able to format or partition Advanced Format drives. Depending on the drive, you would need to take additional steps to make the drive compatible with Windows XP

-Windows XP will no longer receive security patches for any new vulnerabilities discovered after April of this year.

-There are about 50 different ways to set up a dual boot system, with endless guides available out on the internet with a search.

-Yes I feel it would be worthwhile to install Windows 7 on that machine, particularly the 64bit edition with 8GB of DDR3 RAM, which would be plenty for you to run XP with VirtualPC or Virtualbox

-If you have no interest in Windows 7 and wish XP to be your primary OS, then why are you wanting to dual boot Windows 7 as a secondary OS?

-GParted or Parted Magic are excellent hard drive utilities for partitioning and formatting hard drives

-EasyBCD is an excellent tool for editing the bootloader

-Perhaps you should consider getting a hard drive ultrabay adapter and install Windows 7 on a secondary hard drive from a USB flash drive. That way you can hit F12 at bootup and choose the hard drive you want to boot to. That way you don't have to worry about bootloaders or separate partitions on the same drive.

That is everything I can think of at the moment. Good luck!

[Arf the Lab]

-Perhaps you should consider getting a hard drive ultrabay adapter and install Windows 7 on a secondary hard drive

That is just what I've decided to do. That way I can keep XP as my primary OS while learning and getting comfortable with 7. Even if I don't end up liking 7, I'll at least know how to use it.

Thanks for your helpful reply.