replacing hard drive?

[Bigbartguy]

my current "C" hard drive is out of space. I have an extra hard drive that is hooked up that I use to store pics, movies, etc on but the "C" drive is at capacity. I've moved everything that I can from "C" drive but still out of space.

my question is:

can I buy a new "C" hard drive,

copy all of my current "C" drive to it,

replace the "C" drive with the new drive,

and have my operating system work correctly?

I do NOT have all of the start-up/reboot discs, etc that came w/ my computer.

thanks for your help!

[Nick Kuhn]

If you add another drive it will be assigned a new letter. Your computer doesn't care if something is on drive C or if something is on drive Z.

[Bigbartguy]

thanks. I'm wondering if my operating system (windows, dos, etc that are currently on the C drive) will function correctly if I copy my C drive to a new drive......and throw the old C drive away?

will everything still work?

[bobbymalone]

i think if you try the old copy and paste thru windows it won't work the way you think it will. I think you will need to clone or image the disk to make a true copy. there is third party software available to do it, but it's not something I have ever undertaken.

[Nick Kuhn]

Why get rid of the old drive? It's just full, a new hard drive will likely be the same speed as the old one.

[upnorth]

Part of what drive "C:\" is that it is a bootable drive, which allows your PC to start up on it. You almost need to install an operating system (windows of some flavor is the most popular) on it to make it bootable(there are other ways, but not relevant to this topic. Just copying the files over doesn't make it bootable or suitable as drive "C:\". Like posted earlier, just add the drive, do a quick format assign it a drive letter "E" or whatever and you can copy your data files over to that one. You can also install applications to that drive.

There is some disk imaging solutions out there that would do true copy and make it bootable, but if you are just looking for space, not the way I would go.

[Bigbartguy]

thanks to everyone for your help!