I want to clone my hard drive

[aob]

I am using XP.

I have used computers for several years, but never needed to clone a hard drive. I have some basic questions.
1. Do I need more than a software, like Acronis, a new hard drive and a cable to connect them?
2. Must the hard drives have the same size? My present hard drive is 150 GB of which I am using 43 GB. Do I get another 150 GB drive or can it be larger, say 200 GB?
3. Will my cloned hard drive be plug and play, i.e., can I just connect it and start using it?
4. What are some idiotic things I should not do?

[Midknyte]

1. That's about it. Or you can create a backup image and then restore that image to the new drive.
2. No. You can get a larger drive.
3. The clone should be an exact copy of the old drive, so you could just swap them and it should boot normally.
4. Disconnect any drives not involved in the cloning. You don't want to accidentally overwrite the wrong drive.

[HAN]

I recently began using Clonezilla for images but it can also do disc cloning. It's free. It's a bootable CD that runs a Linux environment.

BTW... Yes, the interface is at first, a bit daunting. But I looked for tutorials on the web, found some good ones that were a great help and I made a good image (that I tested by restoring from) the first time. It's fast and reliable. I highly recommend it!

You can check it out here. http://clonezilla.org/

[Shinma]

... 4. What are some idiotic things I should not do?

Since the exact process differs depending on the chosen software,
Read the manual thoroughly and ask any question(s), if any, prior to clone attempt.