Dell Dimension 3000 - remove hard drive

**Precursor: My MonoRail posts will continue soon, but I’m moving my office and have also had the “tech support” calls from friends and family lately, hence the OS, hardware posts.  We all have to do this stuff at sometime, right?  The services and CC.NET posts were because I’m managing our web server.

My next door neighbor’s computer crashed.  As as we all know, if you are in the industry, you are a tech support person by default.

This post is for anyone googling about how to remove a hard drive from the Dell Dimension 3000:

I googled and found nothing.  I resorted to the online documentation and Dell actually had it there.  A hard drive is a hard drive, but when you open this case you can see the 4 screws you need to remove and also the power button cord you need to disconnect from the motherboard and it still won’t remove the bay, you start to wonder.  What you don’t see is something I would have never guessed or found if I had not looked at the manual:

Notice the screw on the bottom?  That was why I couldn’t remove the bay.  Maybe this is my first hard drive bay like this, but it was interesting.

Comments

Joe Ocampo: Next time use a blow torch!

Sean Chambers: I was just fixing a friends dell last week that was this model. After 10 minutes of cursing and trying to force the drive bay out, I took a closer look with the following ah-hah =)

Jason Meridth: i feel your pain

Eugene: Hi, my dell dimension 3000 is dying. Wondering if anyone know which is the best dell desktop for normal small office use?

Nate: I am working on a computer for a customer, and the ‘+’ on the bottom screw is completely rusted in, and I currently don’t have a wrench with me. Scary huh?

Mike: This tip saved me some head scratching for a bit. Thank you.

Jason Meridth: @Mike Glad it helped. It’s stuff like this that reminds me that blogging is worth it.

Dave: God bless you! You were the only Google result I found and you provided me with the CRUCIAL missing link (er, screw). I was just about to get out the hammer! Thank you.

Random: Hi, before i even buy a new hdd for my stupid xp, how du you remove the wire from the power button. Wanna make sure b4 i barek it like i did to my 98 and had to use a pen to turn it on. =p

kayfuem: Hey i have this laptop and i m wondering how to upgrade it, to be fast and other staff, can you show me the RAM and other parts that would make my comp go fast Thanks alot.

Mike: Anyone had a Dell Dimension 3000 Boot CD. I have a Dimension 3000 with a dead hard drive so i was wondering if anyone had the boot cd so i could reinstall my pc to factory settings on my new hdd.

Jason Meridth: @Mike Sorry bro. I don’t have one to give.

junaid: you dont need a boot cd for this computer , when the computer starts on the first loading screen where it says press f12 for boot menu and f2 for something else , press left ctrl and f11 (both buttons at the same time) and it will let you format the computer and it has windows xp software built so you install that aswell you can upgrade to vista later if you wish. hope that helps

Pratik21s: I have a Dell Dimension 3000 Desktop.I want to know what HD should I upgrade to, since the one I have installed is full of space.The HD I that is in the PC is called WDC 400BB-00DEA0.And also how can I remove unwanted programs I don’t want to have on PC.