Compaq 8100 Elite Hard Drive compatibility

[TragikzM8]

I recently bought an older HP 8100 Elite desktop.  This is the Mid Tower Model number AY031AV.   I am wondering if I can replace my hard drive (The hard drive is gone.  Gringing and extremely slow) with any hard drive or is there limitations?  Also I would like to put a new OS on it.  Am I able to do so or does HP lock me from being able to install a new OS?

*UPDATE*

Looks like this Computer only supports SATA I and SATA II .  So if you have this PC You will have to buy a SATA II SSD             (3 GB/s)  if you are looking for faster response time.  I will test this and give an update in the following days.

[Paul_Tikkanen · Accepted solution]

Hi:

I have the HP 8000 Elite CMT and you are correct.

The maximum sata speed is sata II but I installed a Sandisk SSD plus 240 GB sata III drive in mine and it works great, but only at the sata II speed.

You may as well buy a sata III ssd and migrate it to a newer PC that support sata III drive speeds in the future.

The 8200 Elite was the first model in that series to support sata III drives at the full 6.0 GB/S speed.

You should be able to install any windows OS you want.

I have W10 Pro running on my 8000 Elite CMT.

[TragikzM8]

Thank you for your reply,  However if I install any OS I want I dont believe there are Windows 10 Drivers for this PC.  If you know of where I could get them thatd be fantastic but HP doesnt have all the drivers on their website for windows 10.   

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.

W10 will install all of the drivers automatically except for the intel management engine interface and the pci serial port.

For those you can use the W7 drivers.

W10 will install a generic audio driver, but I used the W10 driver directly from Realtek which provides full audio functionality.