Copying a hard drive

My C: drive is painfully full and probably 3 years old. I haven't had any problems "Yet" but between the small size (160G) I want to pull it out and replace it with a larger one now. Does anyone have any experience with Norton Ghost or another imaging program? I have done some reading and it will partition the hard drive to motherboard specifications (I'm not sure how large my motherboard will allow) and then ghost copy the data. Will Ghost copy the OS or should I do Install it first on the new drive? Also a fire wire is probably in order to speed things along

 

Ghost will copy the OS. Your Mobo would have to be old as hell to not allow sizes bigger than 160Gb.

 

3 years I believe. Will Ghost deside how big the partitions are? I was thinking about getting at least 500g maybe even a TB and then partitioning it down to 250-300 each

 

Why not just set the new HD up as a slave, and keep the 160GB for the OS?

 

That's not a bad idea. Would the age of the older hard drive worry you? It's 3 years old. Also When you add programs to the hard drive all the program files are on C:. Can I move (Ghost) all the program files to the new drive and it still work?

 

I would not worry about a 3 year old hard drive. Especially if it was only used for my OS, and all my files were stored on a seperate drive.

I could be very wrong, but you'd probably have to uninstall/reinstall individual programs. I believe ghosting a system will transfer the entire OS with it. But to answer your question... Yes, you could have your programs installed onto one drive while your OS runs on a seperate one. But IMO, there is little to no value in doing this. Personally I would (and do) just use the smaller drive for the OS and installed programs, and then use the newer/larger drive for data storage only.

 

I am just wondering (not at home now) could my office, OS and office files really fill up this 160 gig hard drive? I've got a few torrent related programs I could reinstall as well as firewall, virus protection but 160 gigs?

 

Alright what would be wrong with backing up or Ghost program files (this work PC program files is maybe 2 gigs) swap drives, partitioning new drive with 200gig for OS and Program files. Fresh install of Windows and Office and then restore program files to that partition.