Transferring an installation?

I have a few questions. Have done some google searching but nothing specific to what I want to do came up.

The background on it is this: I am a universty student, and I do most if not all of my work on my computer. Because of this, I've just purchased 2 western Digital Caviar Green 1TB Hard drives, that I want to set up in RAID 1, so that if one drive fails I can use the other.

My current hard drive is a 320GB Caviar SE, split into a windows partition and storage partition.

Whats the easiest way for me to set up the RAID, then transfer over the entire windows installation so that it runs exactly the same way it always has done on the single 320GB drive? If possible I'd like things to run a little smoother than they are doing right now, so reinstalling windows and THEN transferring over all my data and settings is no big deal to me.

From what I can gather, Files and settings transfer wizard will allow me to do this if I were using 2 different base units, but I've not seen ANY instructions on how to do it on one unit but between different internal drives.

Ideally I'd like something like this:

1 - Set up 1TB RAID drives.
2 - Install Windows to RAID array to ensure as bug free an installation as possible.
3 - Transfer over my old windows installation, ending up with a computer that functions in exactly the same way as my old 320GB installation, files, settings, installed programs and all.

In essence, I want to be able to boot from EITHER my 320GB drive, OR the raid array, and see absolutely no difference whatsoever until I check the hard drive capacities.


Also, does anyone have any advice on the best way to set up the partitions on the new drives? The old setup is just a small windows partition and a large storage partition, but if theres a better way of doing it, then I'm all ears.


Sorry for the long winded post!

 

Here's what I would do: I would copy the entire Windows partition over to your RAID. This way it will boot and function normally. There are many programs that will do this for you, both paidware and freeware (freeware links below). Once that's done and you've tested it to be sure the RAID drive(s) are booting and running properly, I'd erase the Windows partition and 'stretch' the data partition to make use of the entire 320gb drive. What you've described: installing a clean new Windows on the RAID and then copying what is essentially 'bits and pieces' of the old Windows is not the way to go. It would be a logistic nightmare. Since you want to boot to the RAID and have it be identical to the OS you're using and familiar with, the best (and perhaps the only) way to do this is to mirror the current Windows drive in its entirety to the RAID. Here's some freeware drive mirroring/copying apps:
http://www.majorgeeks.com/EaseUs_Disk_Copy_d4845.html
http://www.majorgeeks.com/HDClone_Free_Edition_d3809.html
http://www.majorgeeks.com/Digital_Dolly_d5183.html (I haven't used this one)
http://www.pcinspector.de/Sites/clone_maxx/info.htm?Language=1 (slow but VERY complete; good for error prone or crashing drives)

All of these will create a bootable CD or floppy as per your situation. You'd then boot to the program and follow the on-screen prompts to start copying.
DO NOT erase any of your source data until you have tested the copy to make sure it's 100% functional.