My HDD is on the way out on my Win7 laptop – had a couple of warnings from Windows and today it has blue screened twice with Kernel errors. Run a couple of diagnostic tools and it is definitely the HDD.

Windows itself is on an SSD, so I assume it is pretty straightforward to copy all the files on the faulty HDD via a USB caddy to the replacement one, and then swap them over? Or should I be using some clone tool (there is a recovery partition hidden on the faulty disk, so that may be a factor)

Thanks in advance.

depending on the drive most manufacturers do a version of acronis disk image but there is clone zilla which you can burn on a cd. I’d clone to usb and bung it into the machine when you’re done

Mini Tool Partition Wizard Home Edition does pretty much everything when it comes to copying disks and partitions.

Use the Copy Disk Wizard to cloe your data to another disk and then you can swap them

Microsoft have a couple of tools you can use, i’d stick with that.

Perfect opportunity to do a nice clean build..

Windows Easy transfer.
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-GB/windows7/products/features/windows-easy-transfer

Used a few times, copy your profile to a USB stick, Re-build machine, Plug in USB and re-apply stuff. 🙂

Theres the Command Line based USMT (User State Migration Tool) too:
http://redmondmag.com/articles/2013/04/16/migrate-to-windows-7.aspx?admgarea=BDNA

Gparted Linux boot disk.

Clonezilla – free to downlaod, take the whole disk across if possible.

Easeus also works nicely.