Title says it all. Looking for software to transfer data from one hard drive to another.

Regular old copy and paste works fine* for transfers. For backups, try out what looks good from here. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_backup_software) Some external hard drives come with backup software too.

*except very large files in Vista, sometimes.

My backup solution is RAID-1.

which if course doesn't help you, but it's something to think about for the future.

RAID is over-rated for the home. You need two physical disks anyway, so why not store one (at minimum) not plugged in, in a fire safe(better), or offsite(best). Both RAID and external backups prepare against hardware failure, but RAID doesn't help one bit for malware, electrical faults, house fires, or user error(rm -rf / or similar).

RAID is over-rated for the home. You need two physical disks anyway, so why not store one (at minimum) not plugged in, in a fire safe(better), or offsite(best).

Too much work backing everything up every day/week.

Both RAID and external backups prepare against hardware failure, but RAID doesn't help one bit for malware, electrical faults, house fires, or user error(rm -rf / or similar).

I'm mainly afraid of disk failure. If one dies, I don't lose anything.. 2) Disks are cheap.. 3) I don't have to actively back anything up.

My problem is that the current HD is about 9 years old now and is starting to bite the dust. I'm replacing it with a 160 gig Raptor and just want an easy method to transfer the data over without locking my computer up for 4-5 hours copy/pasting 50 gigs.

It's going to be slow regardless of which method you use. Set it to run windows backup when you leave for work (or whatever).

RAID is over-rated for the home. You need two physical disks anyway, so why not store one (at minimum) not plugged in, in a fire safe(better), or offsite(best). Both RAID and external backups prepare against hardware failure, but RAID doesn't help one bit for malware, electrical faults, house fires, or user error(rm -rf / or similar).

RAID is a good thing (though personally I'd prefer RAID 5 over 1), but it is not a backup solution. It fares well in ensuring high up-times and low failures, but as you said it won't protect you against 'user failure'.

one backup way would be using something like rsync to backup your data on another computer (I'm sure something compareable is available for Windows as well?)

It's going to be slow regardless of which method you use. Set it to run windows backup when you leave for work (or whatever).

RAID is a good thing (though personally I'd prefer RAID 5 over 1), but it is not a backup solution. It fares well in ensuring high up-times and low failures, but as you said it won't protect you against 'user failure'.

They're both right. Listen to them. RAID is pretty pointless for home users and doesn't apply to the OP; software is incapable of improving hardware. You basically need to bite the bullet before your drive does and copy everything over manually.