Changing C: drive

Sorry if this is in the wrong area; I'm not sure where to post it!

I'm giving an old computer to my grandson to play with and I'm concerned that the C: drive may be on the way out. I'd like to put in a new 250GB drive for him and make it the C: drive. Is there some way to swap all the files from the present drive - it's the only one in the computer at the present time - to the new HDD so that I don't have to reinstall everything? I'd like to just transfer/copy everything and then take out the old HDD (40GB) and recycle it. The computer is running Windows XP.
Thanks for any help,
.....Gord

 

Clone the old to the new. You'll have the best luck if you connect the new drive, use one of the bootable cloners below, and then switch the drives without ever booting into Windows. Windows may assign drive letters and so on so avoid using it until the cloned drive is in place. The drive manufacturer has cloning software on their site. They have every reason to support people changing to new drives .

Free Drive Cloners/Imagers:

SystemRescueCD
EaseUs Disk Copy (Copies disks or partitions)
XXClone
CloneZilla GParted LiveCD (Complete partitioning and drive imaging/restoration tools)
CloneZilla
Partition Saving
PCI CloneMaxx
Drive Image XML
HDClone
DriveClonerXP
Self-Image
copyr.dma (Copies disk with bad sectors for recovery)

Commercial Apps:

O&O DiskImage
Acronis True Image Home
EAZ-FIX Professional and Easy Image
Drive Snapshot
Keriver Image
Avanquest Copy Commander
Paragon Drive Backup
NovaBackup
R-Drive Image
Norton Ghost
HDClone Pro or Enterprise
Terabyte Image for Windows
Terabyte Image for DOS (can directly access FAT, FAT32, and NTFS partitions)
Spotmau Disk Clone & Backup

 

Thanks Elvandil!
I'll check these out.
.....Gord

 

Just one word of advice. Cloning is a relatively safe process since if it fails for some reason, your original is unchanged and you just try again. But it is important whenever using third-party software, especially bootable media, to remember that drive letters may not be assigned the same as done by Windows. So never rely on a drive letter to identify a drive or partition. You need to go by size or location, or you could end up cloning a blank drive to the system drive you are trying to copy.