Will This Work?

[jerry430]

I have a five year old Dell computer. I've upgraded the memory, video card and added a second 160g hard drive for my videos about a year ago. Though it still works very well, I know I'm on borrowed time for the C drive. Plus, I only have 20% of the 40g C drive left. I'd like to hold on to it for another year or two. I'd like to back up the entire C drive onto the second drive using the Windows backup utility, and replace the C with a new 200g HD ($40 for a Maxtor AR at Staples this week). Then restore the backup to the new drive.
Will this work, or will I have to reinstall all of the program files?

[jerry430]

I should have mentioned that I'm severely challenged when it comes to computers. I started shaking when I saw your references to going into the BIOS and command prompts. I did some research to find that indeed a backup to my c drive would not work. I would have to "clone" the c drive for it to work. I found the Acronis True Image software was what I needed. They offer a 15 day free fully operational trial. I downloaded it and cloned my c drive to the new HD, then repaced the old c drive with the newly cloned drive. Went off without a hitch.

[madcat]

First off, to your question - no. the windows backup will backup the data, but will not make the new C: drive into a bootable system drive (if that's what you meant).
What you want is a software to backup the entire partition or disk to an image file (you can store it on the 160GB), then use the same software after u have the new C: drive to resotre it from that image.

This kind of software will probably run from a bootable CD (or even a floppy disk). "Acronis True Image" or "Norton Ghost" and those kind of things. Or the linux based like the one above mentioned by turajb. But I suspect that a dedicated drive backup software is easier to navigate than a full linux based CD (that usually includes many other tools).