[Can this be done?] New Hard Drive

[5th]

OK....

I'm running:
C: 37gb
D: 300gb
G: 300gb
I: 500gb


I: is a backup drive, so disregard it for this question.

I just purchased a 640gb SATA drive. ALL other drives on my system are IDE/PATA.

I'd like to initialize this drive then transfer the entire C: drive (operating system and programs) over to it. I don't want to have to re-install everything. Then, I want to remove the current C: drive and assign the new SATA drive as C: so that it'll boot into Windows 7 as if nothing ever happened.

Possible? Easy? Hard? Fuckoff?

[Vandil]

Okay, so you're looking to replace the C: 37GB PATA drive with a C: SATA drive and transfer your Windows install over to it.

It's possible.

First you've got to image the PATA disk. Ghost can do this, but plenty of other things can as well. Better to do it with a utlility that will boot off of a CD/DVD into a DOS-like environment.

Next, deploy that image to the SATA disk, again whilst booted into DOS/DOS-like env.

Remove the PATA disk and try booting from the SATA disk.

Windows will hate you and will redetect the installation. Might need another reboot. Should work afterward.