clone/copy boot drive to larger replacement drive ?

I have a 300 gig SATA drive on my computer. Stats in my profile.

I bought a 500 gig SATA drive to replace it with.

When I get done, I want the repair/recovery part and the C:\ part to be on the new drive.

I have an external hdd SATA USB holder to hooking it up to start the process isn't a problem.

But I'm not sure of the exact method as the times I've cloned a drive in the past, no recovery partition was there, and the drives were the same size.

I look through the tutorials and didn't see one that fit. I searched for 'clone hard drive' and 'clone boot drive'.

Thanks for your help.

This free software has a drive cloning component. I've not used it myself. (I am using it for image backup.)

Free Hard Disk Copy/Clone Software for PC & Server Hard Drive. Disk clone, disk backup, disk image and partition copy freeware.

As far as the recovery partition, if you still have the option, I would make the recovery DVD set. I don't know if these are hard wired to expect to be on certain disk sectors. Maybe someone who has Acer can chime in. But according to Easus user manual, the disk clone will copy the entire drive as long as the new one is of equal or larger capacity.

If you want to make your life really easy, use this program (works for spinning disks too): Paragon Paragon Migrate OS to SSD - Overview

Else, I would use imaging. Imaging with free Macrium - Windows 7 Forums

If you post a picture of your Disk Management, I might be able to give you more detailed guidance.

I guess I should mention I have the free BurnAware program. But it doesn't look like it will clone a hard drive.

I really cannot spend money right now, but I don't have to jump on the decision and do it right now either.

I would download both the Free Macrium Reflect 5 and Easus ToDo. Burn the Linux Boot CD and see if they both support all your hardware. Not all boot CDs work on all systems. They tend to vary quite a bit.

I know a guy on another board who preps replacement hard drives in docking stations. Must be pretty easy to do. If his drive fails he just swaps it out and boots up.

edit: come to think of it using shadow copy the programs may be capable of cloning to the drive in the dock while Windows is running. The guy on the other board did it somehow or other with Macrium even before the cloning feature. The drive in the dock was probably exactly the same as the one in the machine. Somehow or other he made an image of the internal and "restored" it to the HD in the docking station.

I have a png of my disk management, but its bigger than 800x600. Shrinking it makes it unreadable.

I'll post it tomorrow if I can get a clue on how so it is readable. I go into work early in the morning this month so I don't stay up late on weekends.

I haven't read all the links posted, but the Linux CD part leaves me a tiny bit confused.

Thanks.