Moving programs to a new hard drive and maintaining Drive letter

[MisterCerberus]

I have some programs installed onto my D:\ drive, and it is almost full, so I have installed a new larger hard drive, which for now is the G:\ drive

I want to move all of my files from the D:\ drive to the G:\ drive, and when it is done, turn the G:\ drive into the new D:\ drive, and use the old D:\ drive for something else. For all intents and purposes I want it to be as if the D:\ drive just doubled in size.

What's the best method and order to do this in?
1. Is there are preferred disk cloning method/program?
and
2. Do I swap their drive letters out before or after copying the programs over?

There aren't that many programs but if I can avoid a day of un- and reinstalling them all that would be handy.

 

[psoohoo]

If there are not startup items on the d: drive, then simply copy the entire drive using any cloning tool, like Macrium Reflect.
Change the drive letter in disk manager and you are done. I am not certain it the app will change the letters for you automatically as well or not.

IF apps are loaded, you cannot simply change the letters on the fly, you will need to shutdown, disconnect D:, boot, change the new one to D:

 

[karenjoly]

Use Macrium Reflect to clone D to G

http://knowledgebase.macrium.com/display/KNOW/Cloning+a+disk

Format D

Go to disk management and change drive letter D to another Letter, e.g., V

Change drive letter G to D

Reboot.