Putting in a New Hard drive into a laptop

[Andrewsc1]

Im getting a new Hard Drive for my laptop. I bought an enclosure kit to put the drive in. Is it possible to just copy my drive on the computer to the one in the enclosure kit or would i have to use a certain program to successfully transfer my OS and all my files to the new hard drive?

-Andrew

[Geek-9pm]

The  external drive will be good for backup of important files.
I have never been able to use a external drive as a system drive. So I would think that you can not make the external drive be an exact copy of the original drive.

But I am often wrong. Maybe somebody else can give a better answer. 

[Andrewsc1]

im not gonna be using it as my standard drive, i just want to know if its possible to transfer my pc data to the one in the enclosure kit, then take the one that i transfered the data to and put it in my pc with no problems.

[Computer_Commando]

im not gonna be using it as my standard drive, i just want to know if its possible to transfer my pc data to the one in the enclosure kit, then take the one that i transfered the data to and put it in my pc with no problems.

1.  Remove old drive from laptop and install into enclosure.
2.  Put new drive into laptop and install Windows.
3.  Once new drive with Windows is functioning, connect enclosure with old drive and copy files (personal data only) from old to new.