Inspiron 5100 HDD capacity limits?

[SavannahLion]

I've got this Inspiron 5100 2.0GHZ, short on RAM and a shot to hell PATA HDD. Spent the last 24 hours trying to recover the data from the hard drive (tried all my tricks ranging from reading the HDD sector by sector to using a few recovery tools such as ddrescue and ntfsclone and freezing. Consistently stops reading at 1.4GB). I figure spending <$100 to install a new HDD and beefing up the RAM is a slightly better option than spending $600+ for a new laptop for the fiance. Give us another year or two of web browsing capability before we retire the laptop to the kids (or if I can convince her to give it to me for a mini-MAME cabinet, even better.  )

So reading up on Newegg, I spotted a one star review for the 320Gb WD drive saying the older Inspirons don't support anything over 128Gb. Like the typical retarded ---uvula--- net denizen, the twit doesn't offer up any specifics which leads me to think he's either an incompetent moron or a shill.

Nevertheless, a comment like that warrants further investigation and I'm coming up against a dead end. Surprisingly, not one single source of information direct from Dell mentions anything remotely resembling HDD size limits. At least all my Abit boards make mention of potential HDD drive limitations. The closest I could find is a third party selling stock Dell drives (no larger than 40Gb) and another selling an OEM Dell  160Gb drive claimed to be compatible with the 5100. At least my old IBM, Abit and Asus manuals mention HDD capacity limits, I guess Dell is too cheap to even offer a mention.

Does anyone have the 5100 know of their drive size limitations if such a limit exists? I don't really want to shell out $90 for a 320Gb drive only to have to bump heads on some silly drive limit.