Want to know if I can copy XP partition from current hard drive to a new one..................

Recently my primary operating system's (win xp pro) hard drive
(Western Digital 20GB) crapped out on me.
the good news is it was still under warranty and replaceable.
The replacement is soon to be delivered and currently I had to
reconfigure one of my storage drives, creating a partition, making it
primary,and making it active,installing Windows XP professional to
temporarily host Windows xp professional. My question is when my
replacement hard drive arrives, can I copy partition the partition
with Windows XP professional I'm using right now to the replacement
hard drive without having to reinstall Windows, or will I have to do a
clean install on the replacement hard drive?
If yes, how?
TIA

Most hard drives come with a floppy disk with software to do just this. If
not a program like Drive Copy will work great.

"Dunny Rummy" <fdsss@dfdsf.com> wrote in message
news:3kjqpvkg1ujhb7178jicugfasb3m51o63j@4ax.com...

> Recently my primary operating system's (win xp pro) hard drive
> (Western Digital 20GB) crapped out on me.
> the good news is it was still under warranty and replaceable.
> The replacement is soon to be delivered and currently I had to
> reconfigure one of my storage drives, creating a partition, making it
> primary,and making it active,installing Windows XP professional to
> temporarily host Windows xp professional. My question is when my
> replacement hard drive arrives, can I copy partition the partition
> with Windows XP professional I'm using right now to the replacement
> hard drive without having to reinstall Windows, or will I have to do a
> clean install on the replacement hard drive?
> If yes, how?
> TIA

In general a partition-by-partition copy will work. In fact, it often works
better than a full disk copy. There is a small chance that you will hit a
blue screen of death, but only if the new disk is somehow very different
than the old one (e.g., SCSI or RAID vs IDE). If you get a blue screen, try
a repair installation of XP, which should preserve files and settings.
However, a repair will erase all windows updates, so will have to
re-download/re-install them. The one other possible problem with a new disk
is aXP's activation. If the only change you have made in the last three
months is the disk (or disks in general), then XP should not ask you to
re-activate. But, even it it does, that is no big deal. First try the
on-line activation. If that fails, call the 800 number on the screen. I had
to do this once (for a BIOS upgrade plus other changes) and it took all of
about 5 minutes. The Microsoft representative was friendly, and provided
the required code.
"Dunny Rummy" <fdsss@dfdsf.com> wrote in message
news:3kjqpvkg1ujhb7178jicugfasb3m51o63j@4ax.com...

> Recently my primary operating system's (win xp pro) hard drive
> (Western Digital 20GB) crapped out on me.
> the good news is it was still under warranty and replaceable.
> The replacement is soon to be delivered and currently I had to
> reconfigure one of my storage drives, creating a partition, making it
> primary,and making it active,installing Windows XP professional to
> temporarily host Windows xp professional. My question is when my
> replacement hard drive arrives, can I copy partition the partition
> with Windows XP professional I'm using right now to the replacement
> hard drive without having to reinstall Windows, or will I have to do a
> clean install on the replacement hard drive?
> If yes, how?
> TIA