[Oblivionon360]

I am just wondering if i have a 60 GB EDI internal hard drive on my laptop, how would i go about transferring all data to the new 250 GB hard drive? Also is it possible to transfer everything including XP or will i need a new XP. the XP i currently have came with the laptop and all I received was discs to restore it to default settings. I was not given a Key or anything. so basically i would like too know what cables i Will need to transfer from my internal 60GB EDI to my internal 250 GB EDI.

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You can use recovery CDs to reinstall everything from scratch on 250GB drive. Then get USB hard drive enclosure (designed for laptop's hard drive), put old HD into it, and transfer all your data back to 250GB drive.

[Broni]

You can use recovery CDs to reinstall everything from scratch on 250GB drive. Then get USB hard drive enclosure (designed for laptop's hard drive), put old HD into it, and transfer all your data back to 250GB drive.

[Oblivionon360]

Ok now my next question may be answered by you or someone else.

My current hard drive came partitioned with the windows OS on the small partition. is it best to try and achieve this again? to try and partition part of the 250 gb hard drive and put the OS on the partition? I would assume that would help keep infections from spreading to the main OS.

[Broni]

I would assume that would help keep infections from spreading to the main OS.

That's not true at all.
Your biggest advantage of having Windows on separate partition is the fact, that if something goes wrong with Windows itself, you can quickly format that partition, and reinstall Windows without touching your data, which would be parked on another partition.
However, in this case, if you reinstall Windows, most of the programs, you installed won't work anyway, because some of programs' files will have to be installed on Windows partition.
So, even, if you keep data, and most of programs' files on another partition, Windows partition will keep growing anyway, which leads to another question: how big Windows partition should be, so you won't run out of space.
Considering the above, and couple of other issues, personally, I never partitioned my 500GB drive.
Instead, I use imaging program (Acronis in my case) for back up.
Today's computers are very fast, so if anything goes wrong, I simply put my back up DVD in, and ~1 hour later I have my computer back to its last perfect state.
Data, installed programs, untouched.
It's much more simple solution.