i recently switched to a 60G 7200 rpm drive. the method i used requires the following:

- acronis trueimage software
- external USB CD reader
- external USB disk drive (or any storage device large enough to hold your disk image)

procedure:

1) install trueimag.
2) defrag.
3) run trueimage. save disk image to the external USB disk drive.
4) power-off. swap drives.
5) plug in USB CD reader with trueimage bootable CD
6) plug in USB disk drive containing disk image
7) power-on. boot trueimage from CD. restore image from external usb drive to new internal drive.

it went very quickly and easily. i am very impressed with trueimage; much better than powerquest driveimage, which i have used extensively in the past. trueimage has become my new full-system backup program.

this procedure worked well for me because i already had the 2 external USB devices. i'm sure there are lots of other ways you could accomplish this, using whatever devices you have or can borrow. for example, you could install your new drive in a cheap external USB case and transfer the disk image to it, then swap drives. you might also be able to use just an external USB burner, putting the image on a set of CDs or DVDs, then booting from the the same external burner.

Maybe a related question. I'm thinking of getting an open bay X31. The drive I plan on using will have a T42 preload. This should be compatible with the X31, shouldn't it? Alternatively, have a PCMCIA and parallel port CDRom drive. Will the X31 boot from either of these?