Hi,

I want to replace my A100's 80gb hard drive for something bigger.
I'm pretty sure I can use any capacity SATA HDD, I had a look in google and some A100 models have a 160GB HDD, which means the A100 supports LBA48 (can address past the 137GB barrier).

Would this hard drive be appropriate?
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Western-Digital-Scorpio-Internal-OEM/dp/B001JSSDGU/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1255719718&sr =8-3

And is it just as simple as loading my XP pro CD once it's all attached???

hello polly
welcome to the pchf , everyone here is very friendly and very helpful

firstly yes the drive you are looking at is suitable ,

but it may not be as simple as plugging it in a reinstalling the xp os from your disc ,
is it a retail version xp disc or is it an oem disc that came with the laptop from the manufacturer?

also the board may need sata drivers installed first so that the xp installation can see the drive to install to,

and the other issue may be the drive may have to be "set up" first

using disc tools from the manufactures web site ,to partition and format

the drive first before an operating system can be installed to it .


does this help ?

Thanks for your help,
I currently have Vista, but want to go back to XP so I've bought a brand new retail package.
My current hard drive is Sata, so would it not already have the drivers?
I have no idea how to partition and format? I think this is going to be harder than I thought!
When I first install the new drive, how do I know if it's partitioned/formatted...?

hello
ok the retail version is ok and will work ,but you would have to check

carefully if the laptop can be set to use xp if it was originally designed to

run vista ,you would also have to download all the relevent drivers for

your system (if they are available)

all new drives come in a raw state and have to be set up to the desired file systems
either partitioned into one drive or a few drives and formatted to a files system such a ntfs

hello
this link will show you the "fun" i had reverting a vista laptop to xp
Installing Windows XP Professional SP2 on Acer Aspire 5315-2153 Laptop Blog Archive The Soulpass Project

this is not to say yours cant be done or be as difficult ,it just to outline that some laptops can be quite involved in setting them to run on xp

As Fixit quite rightly points out you would have to obtain the SATA driver for that machine.

Hello Polly

Has the assistance provided at PC Help Forum assisted you in remedying your issue yet?

An update would be most appreciated.

Thank you.

Marked as Pending