OK. 14 gig hd with 256 RAM. Hd is all but 10% full. Wanted to put much larger hd in, but was told that the motherboard couldn't handle a 60 or 80 gig hd. Was told that I could do a master / slave type situation with up to a 40 gig hd. Anyone ever do this with HP? I was told they are very proprietary and most add ons have trouble. Help!

would need more specs on your system, but I replaced an 8 gig HDD with an 80 gig western digital in my parents Pavilion with no problems at all. Their system was at least 5-6 years old

if youve tryed installing it and it wont pick it. up try a promise card (ide controller).

Thanks lucas & jnj. Haven;t actually tried yet. The WD 80 gig is what i was originally looking at and I was told that the motherboard "probably" couldn't handle that big of a HD. 532 MHz Intel Celeron Processor and 256 RAM. This system is also 5 years old or so.

no problem i put a wd 40 ina buddys comp he has a 550 mhz intel it wouldnt find it. but id try it first if it doesnt find it dont get to worried just pick up a promise card. but id try it and see first like lucas said it might work without having a card. ide controllers are only like 40. bucks

My parents system was a 450MHz Celeron. I do remember that the bios was set to auto detect and it came right up. All you can do is try

The only limitation with replacing / adding a hard drive is the maximum size that the bios will recognise. If the drive is bigger than the max size, it will usually be recognised at the max size. For example, I recently fitted a 20 GB drive to my daughters pentium pro, it installed as an 8 GB drive. Frequently a bios upgrade can overcome these limits. I have yet to come across any PC compatable computer that uses a proprietry drive. The R&D is much too expensive.