Replacement hard drive: how can I copy files from a failing drive to its replacement?

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Will backing up also back up the programs or just files? I have several old programs that I no longer have the install disc. I would like to copy my old drive to a new drive ...OS, programs, files. Is it possible?

Does leo know about XSS attacks?

Worthless advice. Replacing a hard drive should not involve reinstalling Windows - it should involve copying an image of the old drive to the new drive. Otherwise, even with backups, you will have literally days of reconfiguring to do to get the computer back to its original state.

Yes, we know about backups. Different topic.

STEP 1 ABOVE SAYS, "Plug that drive in to your computer as it exists today, still with its old failing hard drive, and copy everything you want to save to the external drive." BUT IF YOUR HARD DRIVE DOESN'T WORK, HOW EXACTLY DO YOU GET THE FILES TO TRANSFER OVER? DOES IT JUST AUTOMATICLY TRANSFER ALL THE FILES? I'M ASKING BECAUSE I HAVE A HARD DRIVE THAT GOT SPYWARE ON IT AND IT DOESN'T ALLOW ME TO LOG IN.

I did the same thing to backup my computer but now I have a new problem. I can tried to restore all the information to my new internal hard drive and I can't. It just sits in my new drive as a complete file and I can't find it on my computer. I have have links, pictures, password and other restore that just sits in my new hard drive. What do I need to do now?

Just connect the broken hard driver and new driver (with the fine OS) into the same PC (most PC support the two hard driver), then copy the file.

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