how high can I go

[klsears]

My son has a dell dimension 4100 P3 w 866MHZ, He is about out of memory with his 40GB ultra ATA 7200 hard drive. Can I put a 120 GB WD which is on sale this week in the system without exceeding the limit. Or should I just add a 80 GB WD which is also on sale. The price difference after rebates if just 10 dollars. I also have two options to add the new drive as a master slave or to add the drive to the zipdrive power. I was told this by a dell rep but he did not seem very knowledgeable about what was in my system. Thanks for your help. ;)

[glc]

The 4100 will accept any IDE hard drive up to 137gb. The Dell cables are cable select type, just jumper the drive to CS and stick it on any available connector. If you have a hard drive, CD drive, and Zip drive, there will only be one available connector anyway. If it also has a CD burner, you are full already - there is a limit of 4 IDE devices without an addon controller card. If this is the case, the easiest way to take care of it is replace the 40gb drive with a 120 - and use the WD software to clone the drive. To do this, you temporarily disconnect one of the other IDE devices to install the new drive, clone it, then remove the old drive and replace it with the new one.

[imbest123]

Stay with the 120Gb hd, its probably a better deal anway.