Infopackets Gazette reader Merlin A. writes:

Dear Dennis,

With all the great holiday (and post-holiday) offers, I decided to upgrade my old 10.5GB hard drive to a much larger 160GB unit. From what I understand, I need to transfer ALL data to the large drive and make it my primary C: drive but don’t know to go about doing this. Can you please advise me on what I need to do?

My response:

If you want to transfer the *entire* contents of your old hard
drive and “clone” it to the newer drive, you will need a disk imaging program. After the
“clone” has been completed, the newer hard drive will look identical
to the old, except you will have more space (approx 150GB). Acronis
True Image is an excellent disk imaging solution and is very easy to
use; you can read a review on True Image in our newsletter.

If you don’t want to use a disk imager (or similar utility), you
can format your new hard drive, reinstall Windows, and then transfer
your files from the old drive to the new one. This is not the
preferred route and involves many more steps, including:

1. taking out the old hard drive
2. installing the new hard drive
3. formatting the new hard drive
4. installing Windows on the new hard drive
5. once Windows is installed, inserting the old hard drive
6. booting into Windows from the new hard drive
7. searching for all your data and files from the old hard drive
8. copying the old data to the new hard drive
9. reinstalling all your programs

Note that when you copy applications (installed programs) from
the old hard drive to the newer one, you will still need to
reinstall the application from a setup utility - otherwise, the
application will not work.

Want more great tech tips just like
this one - hot off the press? Be sure to check out
today’s edition of the
Infopackets Gazette Windows Newsletter! Enjoyed by over 250,000
readers world-wide, the Infopackets Gazette showcases hot Windows
tips n’ tricks based on the Windows Operating System, the Internet,
and solutions to real-life computing problems. Written 3x weekly
[recommended by Chris Pirillo]! And best of all: subscription is
free!