1.Buy a hard drive cloning kit. This will usually include a hard drive case, some cloning software and a USB data transfer cable. As of 2010 these usually cost between $40 and $60.

2.Put the new drive into the casing and plug the USB cable into it.

3.Turn off your computer with the old drive and connect it to the USB cable on the new hard drive.

4.Turn your computer on, inserting the cloning software into the drive and boot from it. After it has started, the software will ask you if you want to do a manual or automatic transfer. Click on “Automatic” and the software will set itself up to copy the data between the drives. You need to tell the software which is the old drive and which is the new drive. Make sure to get this correct otherwise you will wipe out your old drive. It will take an hour or more for the data to transfer.

5.Reboot your computer once it has finished and check to determine if the drive was successfully cloned by going to “My Computer,” clicking on it and looking at the list of drives. You should see new cloned drive under “Removal Drives.” Click to see that it has your files on it.