I just remembered the name of the back up/image software. It Acronis. And if anyone is interested here is a series of videos from NewEgg on computer building. The third video discusses formatting. http://www.youtube.com/wa...6kyib-Ls&v=lPIXAtNGGCw

Here's a guy using Acronis to copy his old C drive to a new one. They are IDEs but the process should be the same. http://www.youtube.com/wa...1PZDWE&feature=related There are a ton more vids in the sidebar for cloning but I like this guy's accent... of course. ;-)

bapu


No drive EVER reports the capacity listed on the box. It's a "format" thing. 43% is not bad. It's when you get near or under 20% of the OS drive that you should be concerned.

One thing about moving folders; if you have EZDrummer (not Superior) and you've installed the samples to your C: drive you cannot move that samples folder. You MUST uninstall EZDrummer and select the option of where to install the samples. This is true of EVERY EZDrummer add on pack. Big bummer, but that is the way it is.

Partially true...  Actually, the box lists the capacity in decimal notation (base 10 - so 160 GB is 160,000,000,000), but the computer uses things in binary (base 2 - so 160 GB is 149,000,000,000).  NOW you add in the formatting, etc. and you're going to lose more.  Your 133 GB is still a bit low so there could be other reasons like a dead partition or two that you won't see unless you're in a disk management utility.
 
Anyway you cut it, even 160 GB is tiny now-a-days (but should be fine for an OS drive).  So, if you can, I'd still recommend leaving the OS on your C drive and buying a larger drive as a second drive for your data.  Personally (as I do with mine), I'd further make the first partition of the new drive match the OS drive in size (and leave it empty) so that I can restore an image backup to it if necessary.  You'll want to have backup software like Acronys AND make a bootable backup CD.  Then, if your C drive dies, you boot from the CD, restore to your newer drive, change the boot sequence in your BIOS and you should be back up and running.  Once up, you should change the drive letters so the new partition is now "C" (note that the partition with your data should not have changed!).  Finally, you'll want to get into the computer box and remove the dead harddrive and cables.

@craig... hey, that's a pretty cool way to do it. No down time while waiting for a replacement drive. Awesome.

This is a good article on how to move common data files etc. off your c: drive. Windows and windows applications still seem to be written for the single drive computer, and most things default to storing lots of crap on the C: drive because the programmer knows it will always be there. Most of the space on your C: drive is probably being taken up by stuff that could equally well be somewhere else. For a 1 TB boot drive this is not a problem, but for a 60GB SSD boot drive it has become an art to move this stuff off C:.

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/windows-7-and-ssds-cutting-your-system-drive-down-to-size/2941

Anyway you cut it, even 160 GB is tiny now-a-days (but should be fine for an OS drive). So, if you can, I'd still recommend leaving the OS on your C drive and buying a larger drive as a second drive for your data. Personally (as I do with mine), I'd further make the first partition of the new drive match the OS drive in size (and leave it empty) so that I can restore an image backup to it if necessary. You'll want to have backup software like Acronys AND make a bootable backup CD. Then, if your C drive dies, you boot from the CD, restore to your newer drive, change the boot sequence in your BIOS and you should be back up and running. Once up, you should change the drive letters so the new partition is now "C" (note that the partition with your data should not have changed!). Finally, you'll want to get into the computer box and remove the dead harddrive and cables.

 
That's even more complicated. Correct me if I'm wrong but the MB looks for the C drive to be plugged into a particular slot. Yes?
As much as I don't want to reinstall everything to a new drive, messing with transfering data between drives on the computer sounds even worse. If I made a backup image disk of the C drive ( DVD), could I remove the old drive, plug in the new one and restore the new drive with the disk? I'm sure there's some formatting-setup to be done to the new drive prior to putting the OS and data software on it.
It sounds a lot of steps either way. 

Actually creating the image on an existing internal HDD and then loading it into the new drive would be far simpler than creating an image onto DVDs. A repair disc is very different from a full image. A full image will take up multiple DVDs and it takes longer and more effort (generally) than just transferring the data to another drive already on the system. If we had DVDs that held 50-100GBs of data and the data transferred as quickly as it does between installed drives AND if the quality of the discs were as reliable as an HDD then yes... that would probably be easier. But that unfortunately is not the case. What craigb describes would only require you to set up a partition (which is very easy), then set up your image software to send it to the correct partition on the secondary drive, remove the old drive, install the new one, format it then send the image back to the new drive. That MAY seem like a lot of effort but it would be way easier than using DVDs. You do however need some kind of bootable disk to act as your operating system to perform the final task which it sounds like Acronis will do. But really man... this is the type of thing you could probably pay a computer store to do for like $50 which frankly for people who aren't actually interested in the hows and whys and just want their computer to work is worth it. I only learn this crap because I find it interesting and hope some day to go to school for it/make a career out of it and I have the time. For anyone who's time is more valuable than what it costs to just get a paid dork to do it it probably isn't worth the effort. Cheers and good luck.

I just watched a few of the youtube videos on cloning your harddrive. Yuh. Okay. They're a little sketchy. I would guess there are instructions for setting master and slave jumpers on the units-(harddrives), they don't give any. Plus, the hookups aren't addressed properly. Looks like a beech without some more information. Hello Geek Squad.

Yeah Beepster, I'm looking at that. throwing the whole C drive on the D drive and cloning the new drive from the copy on D. But I haven't seen that method done so I'm just guessing I could.

Crg

Anyway you cut it, even 160 GB is tiny now-a-days (but should be fine for an OS drive). So, if you can, I'd still recommend leaving the OS on your C drive and buying a larger drive as a second drive for your data. Personally (as I do with mine), I'd further make the first partition of the new drive match the OS drive in size (and leave it empty) so that I can restore an image backup to it if necessary. You'll want to have backup software like Acronys AND make a bootable backup CD. Then, if your C drive dies, you boot from the CD, restore to your newer drive, change the boot sequence in your BIOS and you should be back up and running. Once up, you should change the drive letters so the new partition is now "C" (note that the partition with your data should not have changed!). Finally, you'll want to get into the computer box and remove the dead harddrive and cables.

 
That's even more complicated. Correct me if I'm wrong but the MB looks for the C drive to be plugged into a particular slot. Yes?
As much as I don't want to reinstall everything to a new drive, messing with transfering data between drives on the computer sounds even worse. If I made a backup image disk of the C drive ( DVD), could I remove the old drive, plug in the new one and restore the new drive with the disk? I'm sure there's some formatting-setup to be done to the new drive prior to putting the OS and data software on it.
It sounds a lot of steps either way. 

Old motherboards tended to want the "master" drive connected onto a certain part of the cable and into the first (#0) slot for hard drives.  If you have one of those you won't be able to get a new drive anyway because they don't make 'em anymore!  All the new ones no longer have master/slave jumpers and you can plug them into the motherboard in any order (though you'll have to let the BIOS know when one is your boot drive if the default slot isn't the right drive).
 
Although I hate working on PC's, I've gotten very used to these types of operations.  If you're not to comfortable mucking around in there (especially if you have older hardware) then you probably should take it somewhere to have the operation done for you.   Personally, I'd search Google for a small, independent repair shop instead of using the Geek Squad or one of the office supply stores.