SATA drives are much easier to play with than the old IDE. I assume you have a second SATA connector on the motherboard. Just plug up the new drive and clone it.
Something like EaseUS Disk Copy Home Edition 2.3.1 should work to clone the drive.
http://www.easeus.co...y/home-edition/
You will need to burn a bootable CD or USB drive and boot off it since you can't clone when Windows has control of the drive. Just download and Save the software then run it and choose which you option you want to use. You may need to go into your BIOS/CMOS setup and change the boot order so it looks at your USB or CD/DVD first. Then once it boots, do a Disk Copy, select the Samsung as the Source and the Hitachi as the Destination. (Make sure you get the source and destination correct or you could wipe the drive!)
Once the cloning is done it should be a simple matter of removing the old drive and moving its cables to the new. Or you can go into the BIOS/CMOS setup and change the boot order so it boots from the new drive.
Yes, I have a 2nd connector. Think I'll just buy a new HD as the 3TB ones are going for what I paid for the 500gb one these days.
How do i make a bootable CD? and what size disc/usb drive would i need?
Thanks