Cloning software will copy absolutely everything, making your new HDD completely able to replace the old one. I offer five useful suggestions for you.
1. Where to get? Many HDD makers have good cloning software utilities on their website you can download and use for free. The trick is that most are customized so that they can copy TO only a new HDD made by them. They don't care who made your old drive. This is how they encourage you to buy their product. So, if you buy a new HDD from WD, get their Acronis True Image WD Edition. If you buy a Seagate unit, get their Disk Wizard utility. For others, check their website for what is available. In each case, you download the utility and install it on your current C: drive, and run it from there. Of course, you need to have both the old unit and the new unit installed in your machine to do this.
2. READ the manual document that comes with it. Several of these do much more than cloning, so concentrate on the cloning parts of the manual. When you do run it, make SURE you set the SOURCE unit to your old 80GB HDD, and the DESTINATION to the new one. The process will destroy any data on the Destination unit, so be sure that is the new empty unit.
3. Watch for this quirk I have seen. Many will offer you a set of default settings and ask you to approve so they can proceed. Do NOT just approve! Many I've used default to making the Partition it creates on the Destination unit the SAME size as the Source. But I'm sure you will want ALL of the new drive's space included in one large volume to use. So, use the menu system (this is why I said to READ the manual) to change that option so all of the new drive's space is included. The other default settings usually are fine. When you have these thing set as you wish, THEN tell it to proceed. It could take a few hours, so be patient.
4. When the whole process is complete, shut down. Disconnect the old HDD (your choice whether to remove it from the case or leave it there) and change the data connector ribbon cable for the new drive so that it is plugged into the SAME mobo port as the old one was. That way when you reboot, the mobo will find the boot drive exactly where it always was, and there will be no problem.
5. Later, after you are happy that everything worked properly and you have all your old data on the new unit, you can decide what to so with that 80 GB drive. If you want to use it as a second storage device, you can reconnect it (to a new mobo port) and use some utility (maybe the free one you got originally) to Delete all the old Partitions on it, then re-Partition and Format it so it is empty and ready for use.
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