Looks like I’ll be helping a friend replace the HD in his Windows box. I’m OK with the hardware side, but what about the content of the drive being replaced? This is a boot drive and contains some flavour of Windows XP. What’s the procedure for cloning the old drive onto the new one?

Lat time I did this, it was for my MacPro - and it was a case of running an application to clone the old drive to the new one. Once done, I could boot from the new drive as normal.?

If he doesn't fancy a fresh install, you can clone one drive to another with partitioning or imaging software.

I tend to use the HDD replacement as an excuse to run a major backup and do a fresh install.

I normally use something like Acronis True Image to clone the old drive to the new one.

Thanks all - I’ll pass that on, though I get the feeling that I’ll be asked to do this.

Clonezilla is good & free if you don't want to buy software or use an acronis trial