ahhh... here is one I remember reading about... clonezilla


and here is 'most' of another post on the topic which I copied directly from the newsgroup...by another dependable author.

"On Sun, 21 Aug 2011 09:22:58 -0700 (PDT), Teflon
wrote:

> I have a WD 160 GB external HDD attached to an XP Pro SP3 machine and
> that HDD is starting to act weird, so I would like to move everything
> off of that drive to a new 230GB drive. The old 160 GB drive is
> formatted in FAT32, so would like to format the new 320 GB in NTFS.
> The contents are application backup data and media files.
>
> My plan is to format the new drive to NTFS, then use the XP 'Backup'
> tool to move the contents of the old drive to the new drive. I would
> then disconnect the old drive and assign the new drive the old drive's
> letter (E:), assuming the apps that backup to the old E: drive would
> continue doing so on the new E: drive without my having to do anything
> to the app.
>
> See any problems so far?
>
> Any better approach recommendations?

No problems at all with the concept. Dave Lipman's advice to simply clone
the drive is probably the easiest and best way to do it, though.

If you still want to go the copy route, I've done similar things many times
before with both internal and external drives without a single hitch. I've
never used the XP backup tool, but other free software I use and like for
this and other related copy jobs include:

Unstoppable Copier:
http://www.roadkil.net/program.php/P29/Unstoppable%20Copier
(LOTS of other good software on the Roadkil site)

FreeFileSync:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/freefilesync/

Both are highly useful tools to have, and both offer portable or standalone
versions.
"