Copying a hard drive

[Joe]

So, recently my hard drive has been seeming to take it's final breaths (I hear a really loud, almost revving-like sound from it sometimes), and it's been just stopping (resulting in a system failure) lately. I've diagnosed that he's about to meet his maker, so I want to get a new one.

Anyhow, my problem is it's a 120GB and it's almost worthless getting on that small. I'll probably go with a 250GB or 500GB.

Keeping in mind that it's formatted NTFS and has a Windows install on it that I'd like to keep intact, what's the best way to copy from the old one to the new one completely and take advantage of all the space with minimal damage?

I'm guessing to just install them both, boot into Live Linux, dd it over, and then use PartitionMagik? My biggest fear is that Windows won't like the new size.

Any advice?

[rabbit]

PartitionTragic sucks.  Also, does dd work on NTFS?  I recommend "buying" this.  I've heard pretty good things about it.

[iago]

Install a fresh copy of Windows, copy your personal files over, and re-install your programs?

It never hurts to install a fresh Windows copy, it's good for housecleaning.

[Joe]

I don't have my install CD. Hah.. "my".

[iago]

Then download buy one?

[MyndFyre]

In the past what I've done is booted either to another Windows installation with the drive in another machine, or to a Linux boot CD, and used dd to copy from the old drive to the new.  Then you'll have a 120gb partition on the new drive and a bunch of free space.