[Delboy101]

Hi all

New here and looking for some advice...

My Dell 670 Workstation has finally croaked after many years of loyal service!

The hard drive has packed up and I am looking for a replacement, but I have an assortment of drives which I am hoping I will be able to use. Some of these HDD's are in old external HD casings and there are others that have been salvaged from other PCs.

Can anyone tell me if it would be possible to plug one of these in and get it to work? I don't have the OED Windows XP discs any more so that would be one issue, however I have recently started playing around with Linux after loading Lubuntu 12.04 (i think) on to an old PC which is working fine apart from the pre-installed word processing package (Abiword) which doesn't handle some of the tasks that I am needing to do and used to do before with MS Office 2000. I am looking into how to install Open Office but that's for another forum! I am mentioning all of this as one of the options might be to forget all about Windoze and install Linux on the Dell (if that is possible and workable)

Would be very grateful for your thoughts and advice

All best

Delboy

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Hi,

Based on this on-line specs for Dell 670 Workstation (check page 2)
You can connect Sata I HDD's (1.5Gb/s) max. 500GB and also SCSI. You need to check the HDD's you have if they are IDE or SATA.

SATA at the top, IDE at the bottom

[SleepyDude]

Hi,

Based on this on-line specs for Dell 670 Workstation (check page 2)
You can connect Sata I HDD's (1.5Gb/s) max. 500GB and also SCSI. You need to check the HDD's you have if they are IDE or SATA.

SATA at the top, IDE at the bottom

[Delboy101]

Hi thanks for the reply!

Can you tell me if it is just a question of plugging in a new HD and then installing a Windows OS or Linux?

What about the OEM version of Windows that came with this machine - would it be necessary to find these or is it okay to just install from a standard installation disc (if I decided to run Windows on it?)

Thanks for advice

Delboy

[SleepyDude]

Hi thanks for the reply!

Can you tell me if it is just a question of plugging in a new HD and then installing a Windows OS or Linux?

Yes plug the HD and make sure its recognized by the BIOS then install the Operating System by booting from the install disk.

What about the OEM version of Windows that came with this machine - would it be necessary to find these or is it okay to just install from a standard installation disc (if I decided to run Windows on it?)

Thanks for advice

Delboy

AFAIK to use the key you should have on the sticker stuck to the machine you will need to install Windows using the Windows XP CD you got with the machine, supposedly the key will only work for a OEM CD from Dell not for a standard install disk.

[Delboy101]

Hi again

Thanks a lot for taking the time out to reply - I will plug in a HD and see what happens. I do have a standard XP disc so as long as there are no issues I should be able to re-install windows on to the Dell.

Will let you know how I get on.

Cheers


Delboy

[rshaffer61]

Is the XP disk you have OEM or Retail? The sticker on the system is OEM so if you have a retail version it will not work.

[Delboy101]

It is a retail disc :0)

[rshaffer61]

Being retail the OEM number on your system will not work.

[Delboy101]

But can I not use the number on the retail disc?

[rshaffer61]

Is it currently installed on another system?

[Delboy101]

no not that I know of . . .

[rshaffer61]

As long as it is not installed presently on another system then you can use it. You will have to get a lot of the drivers though from Dell for XP.

[Delboy101]

that was the issue I was thinking about - the drivers... are they easy to identify and download?

what do you think about going with Linux?

[rshaffer61]

Once you have the system reloaded then you will need to go to the Device Manager and find the ones with a yellow exclamation mark next to them. Then you go to Dell's site and find the model number for your system and download them from the drivers page for your system. Nothing wrong with Linux except if you want to play games. It is not a gamer friendly OS.

[Delboy101]

Okay thanks for the advice.

I don't do gaming at all! I really need the PC to do basic word processing, internet access including streaming video and music, music recording, nntp err that's it really.

Could you recommend a distro that would be best for this type of usage, for someone who is reasonably computer literate but by no means an expert??!!

Thanks in advance

Delboy