380z hard drive replacement options

[Garth Farley]

Hi, first post!!!

Anyway, I'm a proud (and poor student) owner of a 380z. It's very dear to me, we've been thru thick & thin together. It's a good few years old now, but I've got a very skint year ahead of me in college, so I'm stuck with it.

I want to get a second hard drive to run Linux on. The 4GB drive I've already got is fine, but full. I still need Windows on it, so I can't wipe it. But I won't mind swapping 2 hard drives.

I'd like to find out what hard drives would work in my machine. Do different brands differ much? I think the BIOS has a limit of 6.4 GB. What details would I need to look out for? I'm sticking to eBay, have found identical HDs to my own on sale for not much, but 6.4GB would be nice

Here's some I'm looking at:
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll? ... 6702765128
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll? ... 5118001783
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll? ... 5116784815
Any help is much appreciated! Thanks
GF

[JHEM]

Welcome to the Forums Garth!

The 380Z is built on the same 440BX chipset as the late model 600 and 770 series machines and has no inherent HD max. limit.

So you can use any capacity 2.5" HD that will physically fit in your machine.

Regards,

James

[SeanM]

Those drive connectors weren't designed to stand up to being swapped all the time. Swapping drives in & out on a regular basis is putting your drives, and your system board, at risk.

[Garth Farley]

No limit? Serious? :drool:
I really would've thought a machine that old would have a BIOS that only goes so high. Then again it is a ThinkPad

SeanM, I do see your point, but I can't really think of an alternative?

Well actually now I can. If I purchase (say) a 10GB drive, I can nicely fit Windoze and Linux on Dual-Boot. And find a cheap USB caddy for my original drive should I want it.

One other question. In a normal PC I know this is not the case, but do all laptop HDs have the same physical connectors? Do they all use the same current/voltage?

Thanks for the speedy responses guys!
GF

[JHEM]

One other question. In a normal PC I know this is not the case, but do all laptop HDs have the same physical connectors? Do they all use the same current/voltage?

IDE HDs, both in desktops and laptops, have standardized connectors and power requirements.

Regards,

James

[Garth Farley]

Yay! That's too logical to be true in the computer world!

Thanks all of you, I'll let ye know how I get on.
GF

[SeanM]

SeanM, I do see your point, but I can't really think of an alternative?

Well actually now I can. If I purchase (say) a 10GB drive, I can nicely fit Windoze and Linux on Dual-Boot. And find a cheap USB caddy for my original drive should I want it.

Good idea. You'll have to learn a couple of new tricks, using boot manager from partition magic or just LILO, but it's well worth it. That's a GREAT old machine you've got there, don't endanger it by switching drives around.

Good luck!

[ironduke57]

Hello.

I have myself a 380Z with a 12GB HDD.
It has a BIOS limit of 8 GB.

BTW: If it is interessting you I have tried to change the orignal PII 300 again a Celi 400. The 380Z don´t like it an hang after normal BIOS beep.
I think that is another BIOS bug or the last the BIOS is to old to work correct with the newer design of the Celi.

Regards,

ironduke57

I hope it is understandable what i am writing.

[JHEM]

Ironduke,

Do you have the latest BIOS installed?

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... SHY-3YVL6D

What OS are you running?

Regards,

James

[ironduke57]

Hello.

Ironduke,

Do you have the latest BIOS installed?

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... SHY-3YVL6D

Yes. Version IGET30WW Date 09/04/99

What OS are you running?

Regards,

James

At the moment WinXP SP2 is installed.
It is a little bit slow but i want to test SP2 before I install it on my main pc.

Regards,
ironduke57

[cogitordi]

I'm new here so I'm doing some catching up.

I have a 20 GB hard disk installed in my 380z. (And... 160 MB RAM.)