[jamesegg]

I have an older Sharp laptop computer with ATA-2 1 Gig HDD (Fujitsu M2714TAM) that has died. I would like to replace the HDD with a larger one, but most of the larger new HDD's are all the ATA-100 format.

I have the following guestions;

(1) will the newer ATA-100 HDD work with my older system ?

(2) I will also be installing win98 os, the only disk I have was an up-grade disk from win95. The install routine looks for the older version of software before the install. Is there a work around this issue ? I really don't want to install 95 and then a clean install of 98


Thank you,

Jim

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Welcome to Geeks2Go!

A modern ATA/100 hard disk is backwards compatible with older 'legacy' ATA interfaces such as ATA-2 but the data transfer rate will be limited by the ATA-2 interface spec which is 66 MB/second max, whereas on a modern interface the drive can manage 100 MB/second max in theory.

However, your main problem will be one of disk capacity. All new laptop disks today have a capacity of at least 20GB, even 40GB is the lowest capacity you can buy at many outlets. Your laptop may not be compatible with disks many times larger in capacity than the existing one. The new disk will work but you may find the laptop recognises only a fraction of it's true capacity owing to an old BIOS and other factors. See here:
http://www.pcguide.c...d/bios/size.htm

As regards installing a Windows upgrade version, you don't need to install the older version first. Start installing the upgrade and setup will ask you to insert the older version CD so it can check it (you may have to 'browse' to the 'Win95' folder on the CD, I can't remember). When it's checked it, you put the upgrade CD back in and setup will continue.

Edited by pip22, 28 March 2008 - 09:26 AM.

[pip22]

Welcome to Geeks2Go!

A modern ATA/100 hard disk is backwards compatible with older 'legacy' ATA interfaces such as ATA-2 but the data transfer rate will be limited by the ATA-2 interface spec which is 66 MB/second max, whereas on a modern interface the drive can manage 100 MB/second max in theory.

However, your main problem will be one of disk capacity. All new laptop disks today have a capacity of at least 20GB, even 40GB is the lowest capacity you can buy at many outlets. Your laptop may not be compatible with disks many times larger in capacity than the existing one. The new disk will work but you may find the laptop recognises only a fraction of it's true capacity owing to an old BIOS and other factors. See here:
http://www.pcguide.c...d/bios/size.htm

As regards installing a Windows upgrade version, you don't need to install the older version first. Start installing the upgrade and setup will ask you to insert the older version CD so it can check it (you may have to 'browse' to the 'Win95' folder on the CD, I can't remember). When it's checked it, you put the upgrade CD back in and setup will continue.

Edited by pip22, 28 March 2008 - 09:26 AM.