Hey guys

Im a total newbie and having difficulty any help or adivice would be much appreciated.

Im planning on installing linux on my laptop, along with xp, i have sellected a distro of linux (xubuntu, if this is a bad choice then please advise). I also have a partition tool and boot manager, again linux based.

My laptop has 1 usb, and a pcmcia cd rom, neither of which i have been able to boot onto with a new hard drive.

My question is if using a 2.5" to 3.5" drive converter i can install the boot manager, xubuntu and windows xp onto the drive, and then transfer the drive to the laptop to complete the config once running????

any help would be great