Transferring all data from old HDD to new HDD

What hard disk did you buy? A free tool to transfer all data from the old to the new drive may be available. I would also download and burn the Windows disc just in case a reinstallation or repair is required.

easeus offers a free partition manager home edition you can use to cloan the drive as well as free drive image software. they are quite good. you could also use a Linux live CD like parted magic.

www.easeus.com/download.htm

http://partedmagic.com/doku.php?id=downloads

This is the hard drive I purchased. http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Barracuda-3-5-Inch-Intern...

I ended up installing linuxmint on it, however still spend most of my time using win7 on the going bad hard drive and get BSOD's every so often. I downloaded a copy of win7 iso of the version which i have installed, and made a bootable usb drive, which ended up not working, when i boot from usb it starts to install windows then says it is missing a driver it needs, and I have no idea which driver that may be, and it gives me no indication of what it is either.

So totay I ended up buying a 10pack of dvd+r's, downloaded a tool for creating a windows install disc from microsoft, the first dvd failed writing at 34%. I tried again after closing all programs and used a new DVD, the burn went through, then i tried to install from the dvd, however after booting via the dvd drive, it just hits a black screen and does nothing, while I listen to my drives buzz uncontrollably.

Gave up trying to install windows for now. I don't understand how windows, is so much freaking harder to install than linux. Heck I would use linux exclusively if I didn't have a ton of games that I want to have access to. While many of them may work on Linux via VM or Wine etc, it was an exhausting several hours to get just a single one of my games to run on linux.

If you downloaded a Windows 7 ISO file, you can use a tool like ImgBurn to burn a DVD at 1x speed (it takes longer, but it should work better).

Used imgburn, apparently the slowest my drive can write is 4x, however the burn worked perfectly. Thanks a ton, as I am leaving this message on my fresh installation of windows 7, on the new hard drive. Now to the lengthy task of installing updates for drivers etc.

Glad you got Windows 7 installed.