Replacing harddrive. Can I mirror old disk?

My friend's harddrive is failing. Sometimes it won't mount on boot and boot fails. Sometimes it works for a long time but eventually fails and the computer crashes.

So we're going to replace the harddrive with a new one. Is there a way we can avoid reinstalling the OS and all the programs and settings and stuff? Is there a way we can mirror the old harddrive onto the new harddrive so we can avoid all that installing? Maybe a software program that will do the job?

 

most new drive kits come w/ clone tool of sorts. u can also buy one like Norton Ghost or such

 

Have you ran scandisk or chkdsk to look for bad sectors on the drive, or tried a new ribbon cable?

This bootable CD http://www.ultimatebootcd.com has cloning tools included. It also has many drive fitness test tools and most hard drive manufactures disk checking utilities.

 

If the new drive does not come with any disks, the tools will be included with the utilities offered for download at their website.

Use the utilities of the of the manufacturer of the current harddrive to test it.

I have known "mounting" problems to not necessarily mean a bad HDD.

Matt