hard drive swap?

i'm using a latitude d800, which has the d-bay module. i've got a second hd (40 GB) module in the slot right now.

my question is, can you replace the hd inside the d-bay?

at this point i'd like something much larger, and i figured you could just grab a laptop hd from newegg and it would be simple. my only concern is that i haven't taken a d-bay module apart before, and i'm not sure what it's like on the inside, and i'd hate to open it up discover i've exposed the platter. also i'm not sure what size (inches) hd would be needed.

anyone who's familiar with this... thanks in advance!

 

Hi and welcome to Majorgeeks forum,

It's no problem to swap a hard drive in the D bay, just make sure it's IDE not SATA and checkout Bay Wolf's step by step guide.

EDIT: You may well be limited to a drive size of 120Gb by the BIOS in your Dell, best to ask some questions about that in the Dell forums, maybe?

 

Here are user guides and service manuals for your dell
http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/latd800/en/index.htm
I didnt look but the service manual may have what you're looking for.

 

As I suspected, due to limitations in the BIOS (and Dell's lack of an updated BIOS to support 48-bit LBA), the D800 looks like it will only safely support 120Gb disks.