Can anybody guide me through copying a hard disk

Ok. I gotcha!

What do you know so far? If you want a bootable image, you will need a cloning program. I have experience with 2. One is http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx, I would recommend it. After you install Macrium, power down your computer, make sure your new drive is connected, as well as the old one. Power up your computer, open Macrium, click on the drive you want to clone from (should be disk 0), then click clone drive, not image. It should ask you where you want to clone to. Select your new drive. Then hit ok, and the clone should start. Keep me posted on any developments.

If you clone/migrate, the destination disk will be wiped of any existing data.

Yes, the disk will be wiped anyway as part of the pre-cloning format. SO back up the files if there are any, then fire away!

IMPORTANT: many system can NOT boot from an external HDD - the boot drive unit must be internal. So the new HDD you install and make a clone copy onto should be an internal unit. Ideally, it ought to be of the same type as the old one you are replacing - for example, if the failing old one is a SATA type, get a new SATA drive. It does NOT have to be the same manufacturer or size, although changing to a new SATA unit that is OVER 2 TB can be a problem. If SATA is what you need, either SATA II (more properly now called SATA 3.0 Gb/s) or SATA 6.0 Gb/s units would be fine.

Some HDD makers will give you a cloning utility for free as a download from their website, as an inducement for you to buy their product. BUT the often are set to make a clone TO a HDD only made by them. So, if you buy a Seagate unit, get their Disk Wizard. If you buy a WD HDD, get their package Acronis True Image WD Edition. Each of these is very good utility package that does a LOT more than cloning, so get the user manual document and read it, concentrating on the cloning part. You will install this software on your existing C: drive and then run it from there.

To make the clone, you will first install the new HDD internally in your machine. Then you run the software and make VERY SURE that the DESTINATION drive is specified as the new empty HDD. That is because the Destination unit will be wiped clean first, and you don't want to do that to any other drive that has data! You may want to adjust the size of the Partition that the cloning software makes to put the copy onto, so that the entire new HDD's space is used in one big "drive".

When the clone copy is complete, you should shut down and disconnect both the data and power leads to the old HDD. Leave it alone for now. Ideally, then take the data cable that was connected to the old drive, and hook it up to the new one so that the new HDD with the cloned copy is connected to the same mobo port as the old one was. This makes it easier for the BIOS to find and use the new unit as the boot device. Close up the case, reconnect power, and boot up. It should look exactly like it did before, except that your C: drive may well have a different size. After a few weeks when you are convinced that the cloning process copied everything from the old unit, you can remove that old drive from the case. If you have reason to suspect it is failing, your best bet is simply to discard it. If you are worried about data theft from it, the simplest tool is physical - just smash it with a hammer a few times before discarding.

If you have a second drive unit that also is failing and is NOT used for booting - it is just a data drive - you can do very much the same process. The only difference is that for this cloning operation, you would NOT need the copy to be a BOOTABLE drive.

This is mainly determined by your computer's BIOS. It needs to support booting from that type of device. For example, if your BIOS is capable of booting from a USB device, then you could boot from a USB stick or from an external HDD attached to a USB port, AS LONG AS the particular device is bootable. For the present case, this means that, in order for you to boot from an external HDD connected via a USB port, you'd need to meet two conditions: (a) the mobo BIOS supports booting from a USB device; and, (b) the HDD in the external drive has been Initialized (Partitioned and Formatted) to be a bootable hard drive. The last part can be met by making it so when you make the clone copy from your old HDD to the new one. But unless your BIOS also supports this process, making the clone that way is not enough by itself. The same rules apply if your external HDD is attached, instead, as an eSATA device, or an IEEE 1394 (Firewire) device.

Whether your BIOS supports booting from an external drive is something you find in the details of your mobo, whether in your mobo manual or from the mobo maker's website.

Reading your mobo manual, it seems yours CAN boot from USB devices like external drives. To do this you will need to change one BIOS Setup setting.

On p. 2-38 of your manual, Section 2.8.1, it indicates you would change the setting for "Fast Boot" from the default "Disabled" to "Enabled", and then set the options to "Full Initialization". This will make sure the BIOS itself has access to all USB devices during the POST process, and does not need to let the OS do that job of handling the USB devices. Further down on p. 2-41, Section 2.8.10, check that the setting for "Launch CSM" is left at the default value, "Auto", so that the POST process will detect all bootable devices. Once those are set, check p. 2-43, Section 2-8-12. There you will see all the possible bootable devices attached and can set the priority sequence for which device to try to boot from first, second, third, etc.

I am going to assume that you still have your old HDD full of stuff, plus the clone on the new 600 GB unit. If that is so, you probably need to re-do the cloning operation with a small change.

To check something further, exactly what cloning tool did you use?

The problem, I suspect, is that many cloning utilities default to making the Partition on the new HDD the SAME SIZE as the old HDD. To me that is silly, because MOST such operations are done to move to a new LARGER HDD, and almost all users want to make the new clone to use the entire new drive's space in one large Partition so they have a big new C: drive with lots of Free Space.

Re-examine the manual document for the cloning tool. I expect it will detail all the menus. In setting up the cloning operation you get to set several parameters, such as:
1. The SOURCE drive (your old HDD)
2. The DESTINATION drive (your new HDD)
3. The size of the Primary Partition to be made on the new HDD to accept the data
4. Whether or not the new Primary Partition is Bootable
5. The File System to be installed in that new drive (usually NTFS)
6. Whether the Format operation to be done will be a Quick Format or a Full Format

It is items 3-6 that are suggested to you by default and usually you are asked to approve them before the operation proceeds. To make a change you must NOT agree - you must decline and use the menu system to make your changes.

It is Item 3, the Partition Size, that I believe should be changed in most cases. You probably want it to be as large as possible. In your case, that will be about 560 GB. (This is NOT a loss of space. It is a different way of measuring it. The HDD maker calls 1 GB 1,000 x 1,000 x 1,000 bytes, but Microsoft Windows calls 1 GB 1,024 x 1,024 x 1,024 bytes; hence Windows says a HDD maker's 1,000,000,000 bytes is 0.93 GB, but it's the SAME space!) So, check the manual for how to make this change in the menus.

Item 4 NEEDS to be Bootable if this is the drive that contains your OS to load, but does not need to be if this drive is just for data.

Item 5 should be NTFS for almost all cases unless you know you have a special need for FAT32,

Item 6 usually defaults to a Full format. This takes a VERY long time, but it tests absolutely every Sector of the drive to catch any bad ones, so it is a good safety step if you have the time. Choosing a Quick Format is MUCH faster, and probably safe on a brand new HDD that should not have any Bad Sectors.

As I said, many cloning utilities propose a set of parameters by default and ask you to say yes to let it do that. BUT you should make any changes you want first, THEN finally approve all your settings to let the cloning proceed. If you re-do the cloning this way, you can make your new HDD's C: drive the entire space of the unit, instead of 139 GB. Since your new HDD has a 139 GB Partition on it now with the clone you made, as a first step you probably will have to tell the software to Delete any existing Partition on the new large DESTINATION drive (do NOT do this to ANY other HDD unit!) so it is completely empty before starting.