Installing a new windows drive

Hail noble geeks,

I am installing a new C: drive. Background is that I am running Vista 64bit on a simple volume (no partitions) SATA NTFS 250GB hard drive, that is slow and acting a little odd, so I am trying to clone the C: drive to the new drive, without creating partitions or changing the boot drive letter from C:

FYI - I have a 2nd drive designated as E: used solely for storage, which I have unplugged as I only have 2 SATA cables available (second cable is being used to format the new drive). I want this to stay as drive E: which is why I dont want to partition the new drive. The old C: drive will be taken out and not used after installation of new drive.

Questions -

If I am planning to clone the C: drive to the new drive, does it matter what drive letter the new drive is given during initialisation / formatting?

Does HDCopy clone the existing drive so that after I duplicate C: drive onto the new drive, the new drive can simply be plugged into SATA1 slot with the C: drive letter?
(I have a faint memory of trying this a few years ago and ending up with a boot drive as E: and a storage drive as F:, and no C: drive, so I am a bit paranoid)

 

Update - the new drive is 1TB, the old one is 250GB. A program called EASEUS Todo seems to be able to clone the old drive onto the new one, but it seems to force a 250GB partition onto the new drive, which I am trying to avoid.
Is there a way to clone the drive without splitting the new drive into partitions?

 

Acronis True Image, (from WD) did the job

 

Thanks for the feedback! Quick question - did you try HDCopy, and if so, what happened?

 

Didnt actually try it, though Acronis True Image is free to use and I recommend it