My hard drive on my laptop is old and as well as has less space. So I am trying to get a new hard drive installed. Is there a way that I can mirror or back my hard drive so that I dont loose my installed programs? Thanks in advance for the help.
There is, but unless you can connect both drives to your laptop at once, you need something to mirror/back up your old drive to. A bootable external hard drive would work among other things.
You will also need a utility like Norton Ghost. The last time I mirrored anything I used Maxtors Maxblast utility which works pretty well and is free to download.
Actually thinking about it, it doesn't need to be bootable. However, the utility ala Max Blast or Norton Ghost or what have you needs to be able to see it.
Download MaxBlast ver 4 and install it to a CD. Then boot from the CD and see if it recognizes the external drive. If it does, you're in business and you can copy for main hard drive to that. Be advised that this will wipe the data on your external drive though.