Another Dell Problem..

I've encountered same thing - had 4 hard drive failures this year on 2 laptops and 2 desktops. Thank goodness for Ghost backups, thats all I can say!!

I upgraded the size of all and wondered why some would see all the new drive and others wouldn't. In most cases it wasn't big deal since I was installing a 160Gb replacement, but still, I'd like to have it all.

Mine are all Dells that don't come with orig XP Discs, but a system restore disc. Can I use the PCs restore disk that saw all 250gb to format the one I really need all the space on? I was under the impression these restore disks were PC specific and couldn't be used on another??

If I can, then since the Ghost image I'm restoring from that PC is SP3, there shouldn't be probs should there??

Originally Posted by Duster_360

I've encountered same thing - had 4 hard drive failures this year on 2 laptops and 2 desktops. Thank goodness for Ghost backups, thats all I can say!!

I upgraded the size of all and wondered why some would see all the new drive and others wouldn't. In most cases it wasn't big deal since I was installing a 160Gb replacement, but still, I'd like to have it all.

Mine are all Dells that don't come with orig XP Discs, but a system restore disc. Can I use the PCs restore disk that saw all 250gb to format the one I really need all the space on? I was under the impression these restore disks were PC specific and couldn't be used on another??

If I can, then since the Ghost image I'm restoring from that PC is SP3, there shouldn't be probs should there??

In my experience, Dell discs should just dump right into whatever HDD is available and not care about the size other then its big enough but with Dells, you just never know for sure either.

Took the easy way out (least amt of time too) and partitioned that drive space above 137gb so I have it all, just in 2 pieces, which is fine, the important thing is having it.

One of the 4 drives I've bought included a CD by WD "Data Lifeguard Tools" and using this, it took about 30sec to make the partition.