Thanks for the cautions, both of you. There's a certain mystery in the "builder" upgrade process and in this thing called "pumping" that I should search the BBS/FAQs to better understanding. I mean, *pumping* the drives? Don't people go to jail for that?

As a devout follower of the god LazyBoy, I may just have to give the Ghost/PartitionMagic thing a whirl once since I could just try cloning my existing 12G to a new 20 (Ghost sector copy followed by PM resize) without altering the 12GB. I can then report back, for good or ill ("Waaah! My Empeg won't boot!") One thing I've noticed is that a number of on-line suppliers (I've used WestTech in CA) that used to have IBM/other laptop drives in their inventory are not showing much at present. I suppose it could be supply shortages, but I'm more inclined to think that it's economic/inventory pressure that's manifested more noticably by eTailers.

Recession paranoia?

Jim