Dell Inspiron 8600 Hard drive

[Blue Ghost]

I recently had my old Dell Inspiron 8600 come back to life. It had been sitting unused for over a year due to thinking it had died. On a whim I turned it on and it has been working fine for a week now. Back when we thought it was going I was sure it was the hard drive due to the noises coming from it and messages such as hard drive not found and such.

Now, I know that it is roughly 4 years old but I would like to upgrade it and get a few more years out of it. Its always been a steady reliable laptop and I would like to see what I can do for it vice buying a new one.

My big question is Memory and Hard drive. I have been running in circles here trying to figure out what to buy in both regards. It currently has dual 256 for memory and a 60 Gb Hard drive. I really wanted to run 120Gb and maybe 1 Gb Memory but am at a loss as to what products to buy to get me there.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. (I know the dell site lists some accessories to upgrade to but I try to stay away from their site.)

[EXreaction]

For a hard drive you are looking at about $60

Memory is about $35 for 1GB or $85 for 2GB.
Newegg.com - G.SKILL 512MB 200-Pin DDR SO-DIMM DDR 333 (PC 2700) Laptop Memory - Laptop Memory
Newegg.com - Patriot 1GB 200-Pin DDR SO-DIMM DDR 333 (PC 2700) Laptop Memory - Laptop Memory

[osprey4]

Any 2.5" EIDE hard drive will work, not SATA. This Western Digital Scorpio WD1200BEVE 120GB 5400 RPM 8MB Cache ATA-6 Notebook Hard Drive looks like a good deal. The 5400 rpm is the best compromise of speed and battery life.

A couple useful links:
Hard drive installation instructions for Inspiron 8600
How to reinstall XP on a Dell

Good luck!