Transfer Windows to another hard disk

"Two ways come to mind:

If you have a spare computer with a 100GB drive, download the eval for Windows Home Server, and install it. (You need 20GB for WHS itself.) Back up the 80 onto WHS. Swap in the 500 and then do a restore with the downloadable Windows Home Server Home Computer Restore CD. (Be sure to read up on how to make sure you copy any required drivers to restore.) You might want to keep WHS -- it makes backups easier.

With just that one computer, put the 500 in with the 80. (If you're still using old PATA instead of SATA, it should be faster if you put the two hard drives on different channels/controllers.) Download the latest Ubuntu and burn it. Boot and run the Live CD. Under the System > Administration menu should be the partition editor GParted, sometimes called ""Partition Editor"". Run it first and use the drop-down menu at the top right to figure out which disk is mapped to which device. One will probably be /dev/sda and the other will be /dev/sdb. It's obviously critical that you get this right -- but you do have a backup, don't you? Suppose the 80 is sda and the 500 is sdb. Quit GParted. In a terminal, copy the drive:

sudo dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb bs=1M status=progress &

""As the superuser do: use 'dd' (supposedly ""data definition"", but that's not a good mnemonic) to copy from the input file 'device sda' to the output file 'device sdb' using a block size of 1 megabyte; and run it in the background"". The shell will report the process ID number (usually a 3- to 5-digit number, not just 1 or 2). Unfortunately dd doesn't say anything while it works unless you add ""status=progress"", you can still ""kick"" it by sending a signal:

sudo kill -USR1 <process ID>

(that's ""USR one"") or you can just wait. When it's done, it will do a final report of how many blocks it copied. Run GParted again and resize the 80GB partition to fill the 500 disk. Shut down Linux. If necessary, remove the 80 (or at least unplug the data cable). Boot the 500. Windows might freak out because the partitions don't make sense. This is usually fixable by booting the install disc and having it do a Repair.

Disclaimer: I have not tried either of these with Windows 7, but have used both methods on earlier versions."

"Personally, I think the best tool for this is Acronis Disk Director, however it is not free.

For a free solution, I know people who have had success with DriveImage XML.

Also, it may be worth looking on the site of the company whose hard drive you bought. They usually have a free tool that can assist in this (and other) common file operations."

"Another way to copy your OS and all other stuff is copy your partition with EASEUS Partition Master. It works very well and you can manage all your partitions.

After the copy I recommend to take out your old HDD. Let your computer start up and see if it works ;). Do not delete your old partition if you're not sure that the copy works! I run Windows 7 home 64bit and everything works fine after the copy.

I still have the old partition as a backup on another HDD"

"I'd personally reccomend Acronis Ture Image Home Edition. You can take an image of the HDD and store it either on another computer on the network, on Physical Media such as a removable HDD or DVD's, you can then restore this image onto the new HDD.
Another handy option, although it might be only on higher end products, is the universal restore which allows the image to be restored onto dis-similar hardware and drivers specified and added at image restoration time. I've used this product for a few years now, as well as the enterprise versions, and have had only positive experiences, even when moving servers from box to box for testing and migration."