upgrading dell inspiron laptop e1405

my dell laptop e1405 is an XP OS. I'm trying to squeeze as much usage as possible. I have upgraded the RAM to 2GB, replaced the keyboard and need to replace the HD. Diagnotics shows all working except HD is going out. What size HD and should I upgrade to Windows 7?

 

I have MS OFFICE and QUICKEN use every day and email.

 

Hi my friend , welcome to MG's :major

You can give your service tag

http://www.dell.com/support/content...ort-Knowledgebase/locate-service-tag/Notebook

you can also to Start - Run msinfo32 - ok
go to
Components expanding this
Storage expanding this
Disks

you can give the model of your hdd , Western Digital Scorpio Black is a good solution for new hdd :wave

 

I second that.

You can upgrade to any size you are comfortable with and can afford.
The bigger the better I say, but I have a lot of digital content. The more content you want to store on your drive, the larger you should go. Just remember if you don't back you important stuff and your drive fails, say 7 yrs down the road, you will loose all of that content.

Other things to note:
DO NOT buy wd green; I haven't bought them in a while, but I bought one about 2 yrs after they were launched and it failed in 2 weeks.

Check the RPM of your current drive. I would recommend getting a drive of similar RPM to prevent any heating issues. 7200 RPM drives like the WD Black series tend to run hotter than the 5400 RPM WD Blue counterparts, though reliability and performance of WD Black is reputed to be much better. I have WD Black in my laptop and WD Blue in my PS3, and I can tell you, they both work great.

 

I'm trying to squeeze as much use as I can out of my Dell Precision M70 too. I went with faster RAM and already had 2GB but am increasing to 3GB. I also increased my HD from 80GB (WD Blue) to 120GB (Toshiba). I also went to Vista Ultimate (32-bit) from XP Pro (32-bit).

I went with Vista because as DavidGP said, device drivers were an issue with Win 7. During OS installation, Vista configured all but two of my devices and for those two, my XP drivers work perfectly. Vista also handled my Lexmark inkjet and HP Laserjet printers when I connected them.

And with the Ultimate versions of Vista or 7, Microsoft throws in Windows Ultimate Extras although, you have to get them with Windows Update.

 

Is this your Dell notebook? So you'll be looking at 2.5" SATA drives, which gives you a wide range of options.

This Wiki Page indicates a "4Gb RAM Total" and "Vista Home" as Specs, yet you're stated "2Gb" and "XP" so I wanted to verify this so our discussions can be more precise.

But it looks like it will take "any" HDD capacity you choose - up to 2Tb because that's the Boot Drive limitation.