I do this frequently <g>

You can get a 1TB hd now for under $100. ( Amazon, NewEgg.com or Ecost.com ) Should be able to get a WD or Seagate for $80 or so with free shipping. 1.5TB for about $100.

Just plug in the new HD, boot from the Windows 7 DVD, create thew new HD as a boot drive. The system should see the other drive as a slave. ( no more jumpers with SATA drives )

I'd reinstall clean on the new drive, copy files over from the old drive as needed.

I remember you said you upgraded a Vista to a Win7. My first rule of OS has always been never ever upgrade. Install clean.

Oh, and if you buy a "bare drive"/OEM be sure you have an SATA cable laying around or order one with the drive.



>My main home computer has accumulated enough junk that it has become a little iffy, even after a recent upgrade to Windows 7 Ultimate. Installs and uninstalls are particularly dicey. Also, the hard drive is only 160 GB and down to about 30 GB free. I am considering two alternatives. One is to migrate everything to what has been a spare computer used only for developmentm making the current main computer the spare. The other is to buy a bigger hard drive and start fresh on that. The purpose of this post is to do a sanity check on the plan if I take door number two. Am I missing anything here? ---
>
>1. Back up everything from the current HD to an external USB hard drive. This is already happening. The USB drive has backups from Norton Ghost and a daily automated backup by Backup4All. For good measure, I use Carbonite to keep everything backed up on the internet.
>2. Test that I have a bootable DVD disc. I think the Ghost install/recovery disc will do.
>3. Replace the hard drive.
>4. Reinstall Windows 7 clean.
>5. Reinstall applications.
>6. Restore data files from the external HD.
>
>Any gotchas I should be aware of or am overlooking?
>
>Also, if I do buy a new hard drive, any recommendations of sellers?
>
>Thanks!