Aspire 5315 HDD Upgrade/ Can I install XP at the same time?

I just bought a 5315 yesterday. It's great to find this site and discover it has huge upgrade potential.

I am looking to upgrade the HDD, probably to 250g. I was pricing Norton Ghost to help tranfer vista. For the same price, I can pick up Windows XP.

If I install the new HDD, and have the windows XP disc in the optical drive, can I boot up and load XP onto the new, empty hard drive? This way, I don't need to ghost my current hard drive, and can keep it, in case I want to switch to Vista down the track (unlikely, only real benefit I can see with Vista is DX10 graphics, which I think a bit pointless in a notebook).

Thanks, and great site.

 

Yes, you can...though you would need to get SATA drivers for the XP installation since XP is 'old' and does not recognize SATA drives right away.

Google 'slipstream' and 'nLite' to learn more, or just keep asking on the forums!

 

Check this out.... Installing XP Pro SP2 on Acer Aspire 5315