Single Hard Drive Install

I need to install a larger HD into my HP computer. The current HD has a partition labeled D that is HP's backup which is FAT 32 and C drive contains everything else.
The computer cannot accomodate a slave HD.
I do have an external HD connected by USB2.
I would like to install a larger HD internally and remove the existing HD but I prefer not to start from ground zero.
Is there a way to "clone" the existing internal HD to the external HD, then install the external HD into the computer and have the computer rhe same as it was with the old HD?

 

This generally isn't possible on OEM systems, unfortunately.

 

this is possible if you use a hard drive image program, like Symantec Ghost, or Acronis TrueImage.

you would first need to create an image of the current drive, then expand the image on the new drive. That would create the same size partitions however. To utilize the entire new drive, you would either have to create a new partition in the empty space, or expand the current windows partition to use the empty space.

Expanding the partition can be done with a partition utility like Partition Magic, but risks corrupting the data.

However, I strongly recommend 'starting from scratch' and doing a fresh install of Windows on the new drive.