Hi,

I have one 160GB sata HDD wich is within 10 GB of its capacity so I just bought a 400 GB sata drive. Is it possible to completely transfer everything on my old HDD to the new one without reinstalling windows and all my programs? So that it will just boot up on the new 400GB and be exactly the same as before?

Thanks for any advice.

I use a free program called Copywipe, Google it. It only supports internal hard drives connected to IDE or SATA (no USB, Firewire, etc.). It's fairly easy to use and is a very small download. You shouldn't have to reinstall Windows as long as it's going into the same PC. I've done it several time and have had no issues.

You can do it with a trial version of Acronis True Image also.
Acronis is great software.
Attach the new hard drive. Install and run Acronis. Remove the old drive when finished.

Norton Ghost is also a good one. I have used it a number of times.

Acronis also has a trial of Migrate Easy, which is specifically for what you are trying to do.

http://www.acronis.com/homecomputi [...] grateeasy/

Thanks guys for all your help. I tried copywipe but i would reccomend acronis if your not sure what your doing (like me) as it was incredibly easy to use and worked a charm. It did all the work while i ate my dinner.

Just to ask a question here:
KyleSTL suggested using Norton Ghost to transfer all the old files to the new harddrive.
However, the new harddrive of LkS is 400GB while the old one is 160GB.
Is it necessary to have a partition of the same size as the old?

No, that isn't necessary to partition to the same size. It will simply make a bit-by-bit copy of the old onto the new one. If you want to make partitions after that try a program called Partition Magic 8. It is an absolute God-send.

Yes you can and you do not have to buy anythin. Download gparted (iso) burn it and follow the instructions in this link
http://www.justlinux.com/forum/sho [...] did=149328
Hope it helps

Can't believe I had to get to the last post to see someone mention a non-commercial option.

First, I would stay the hell away from Acronis. I used the free version maxblast that came with a Maxtor drive I once bought. It did not work right. It also did not fully uninstall when I 'uninstalled' it and kept loading some code at boot slowing my system. Then I had to search and read to learn how to uninstall this malware.

GParted is a good prog. I like G4U. (ghost for unix, but usable for copying any OS). I used G4U last time to move windows and it worked great.