the hard drive is a Toshiba HDD 2181... i pulled it out, and turned the computer on... guess what... no grinding fan like noise, and it went to the "no bootable devices" screen rather quickly... put it back in, and its grinding away, taking forever to boot up again... you can also feel vibration directy over the top of where the drive sits in the computer... and its back to its slow ways of getting to the blue error screen...
i will try your link, but with the drive making this much noise, its almost a dead giveaway...
If it's making noise like that, it's toast.
Looks like those older HDD's are more expensive than I thought. C&P the link into your browser.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007605%20600003442&IsNodeId=1&name=IDE%20Ultra%20ATA100%20%2f%20ATA-6
Cheaper but smaller here..
http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-ST980815A-80GB-5400rpm-Drive/dp/tech-data/B000H4WKWKDouble-check the interface before you buy, but I believe these are correct.
If you try to go bigger than 137GB you may have trouble.
There was a 137GB ceiling with the old BIOS instruction sets.
The new instruction set would allow "large drive recognition".
If you haven't flashed BIOS before, probably not a good time to practice with the machine inoperable, etc.
Look for a 120GB or smaller if you have this older BIOS.
You could look up the Dell model number and see what HDD options they offered.
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