Upgrading hard drive in old Compaq

[7YL3R]

I've been thinking about upgrading my Compaq Presario R4000's hard drive from the original Toshiba MK4035GAS 40GB to maybe this:

https://www.amazon.com/128GB-KingSpec-2-5-inch-SM2236-Controller/dp/B0091T4ZWU

or this:        

 https://www.amazon.com/Super-Talent-2-5-Inch-Internal-FE8256MD2D/dp/B00L53B7BM/ref=pd_lpo_147_tr_t_3...

Any thoughts or things I need to take into consideration?

[Huffer]

I have actually done that before with an older laptop running a PATA hard drive and it sped things up a little. Not quite like an SSD in a SATA system but still worth doing. If you have some old CF (compact flash) cards laying around from an old camera you no longer use you can basically make one of those PATA SSDs for a couple bucks:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/like/191965228867?lpid=82&chn=ps&ul_noapp=true

I restore vintage laptops for a hobby and PATA hard drives are getting hard to find in working order. Some of the older ones particularly need a drive less than 8.4 gigs and those have not been made in a long time so we hobbiests use these CF to PATA adapters to make workable hard drives. Actually speeds up old 486 computers a bit.  

[7YL3R · Accepted solution]

Interesting, I hadn't considered that. How much space do they get?

[Huffer]

Depends on what size CF cards you have. I have CF cards from 128 megabytes up to 128 gigabytes. If you have to buy a CF card you might as well buy one of the PATA SSDs; they cost about the same per gig. The adapter makes sense if you happen to just have some CF cards laying around unused so that they are essentially free. 

[7YL3R]

Do you know if the bios parameters would even allow me to upgrade to a drive ovr 80GB? I think I read somewhere that it dends on how big the drive is as to whether or not I can install the size drives that I want to.

[Huffer]

You already gave yourself the Solution so this is closed as far as I am concerned. Good luck with your project.