Installing new seagate pata/100 hard drive and belkin ata/133 controller

Enter the BIOS (setup menu on power on) and then holddown the key and depress the then the keys insuccession. This will force the motherboard to load default settings and alsoforce the motherboard to redetect all IDE devices. Note: The selection for thefloppy drive will be set to ON. If you do not have one then you must disablefloppy in set up (BIOS) menu.

Check the manufacturer's web-site:

http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/driverslist.aspx?c=us&cs=2684&l=en&s=pub&os=WW1&osl=en&SystemID=DIM_PNT_P4_4500&catid=-1&impid=-1

for your (7-year-old) model, and you'll find a list of PATA (Parallel-ATA) disk-drives recommended by Dell, up to 120GB. Any PATA disk-drive that you can buy, up to 500GB, should also work.

The drive you are installing is a SATA drive. The system came with a PARALLEL ATA or PATA optical drive, The motherboard has a SATA controller and the HDD is a SATA drive. So you need a SATA data cable and connect it to the SATA 1 port on the motherboard. There should be a SATA power connection inside the chassis that is not being used, that you can connect to the drive. Then go to system setup (F2 at boot) enable the SATA 1 controller and disable the PATA controller
http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/dim3100/en/sm/parts0.htm#wp1043338

You can put as large a hard drive in there as you like. If the bios does not recognize the entire thing you can format and partition it using the HD manufacturer's software.

It is SATA - Serial ATA (DELL Dimension 4700)

If the plugs are different most likely you bought a SATA drive. If your MB doesnt support SATA then there really isnt any use for that drive, i would return it and purchase an IDE drive, chances are thats what you have. Good Luck!!!

that one looks like you would need a Serial ATA-enabled motherboard or adapter card find one that is pata/ide

hi mclarenwkj

i realy dont think that you need pci controller card all it doing is spliting it up because some of the towers can not handle that much gbs so if you feel that you need to buy a pci controller card that is up too you.

thanks tazman

This motherboard is compatible with PATA/IDE Hd's running at 133/66/33Mbs. & ATA/SATA 1.5Mbs drives. The SATA's run faster. This board will not handle a SATA II's speed but it will still run on the P5P800-VM board. The links below show good buy's on both PATA/IDE & SATA I & II. Seagates for their 5yr. warranty.
Seagate ST3160215AS 160GB ATA/SATA
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=117012
Seagate ST3160215A 160GB Ultra ATA/100
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=117010
As far a size, that is up too you. Windows can handle 5 time these sizes.

Please don't forget to vote.....

Try increasing the actual partition to the capacity numbers in the windows xp formatting , and also format the hard drive using NTFS .