Thanks to all who helped me (especially Shawn!) with swapping out me HDD. I successfully replaced my 160GB HDD with a Seagate 500GB 7200 RPM drive. At the same time I switched the 512 RAM card with a 1G RAM card and was alos successful. I was concerned with recognizing both when I turned on the Aspire, but lo and behold - no problems at all! I believe the key to success was using Segate Discwizard to clone the new HDD before installing it. Worked like a charm!!