Guess what? A Quantum Bigfoot IDE drive will not fit into the 5.25" drive slots of a Dell 500SC chassis. At least, not and have the front panel cover on. Screwing in the drive means that about 1/4" protrudes from the front, making it about even with the faceplate of the cd-rom. *sigh*

I just have it set inside for now.

Also, the Bigfoot drive causes a 'drive operating outside normal parameters' error on boot with the Dell. I think the Dell SmartDrive circuitry cannot detect the bigfoot - after all, we are talking fairly old tech with that drive. Several years old. I think the Dell simply cannot deal with the Bigfoot and thinks it is failing, when it is actually perfectly fine. ignoring the error every boot is a pain, but it formatted fine - no bad sectors at all.