Will this work?

Last time I tried something like this I ended up losing everything.
I want to replace my current sata boot drive without having to reinstall.  I only have 2 sata ports, the other of which is being used by the dvd drive.  My plan is to put the new drive in the dvd's slot, copy everything from the existing drive to the new one (how I don't know yet), then put the new drive in the old drive's slot.  Will this work?

age

Yes.

But you need to copy the master boot record too. Or just run the windows cd recovery console and do fixboot on your new drive.

Ooor maybe it won't. Never tried it. But so long as you don't do something stupid like magnetize your starting hard drive you certainly can't go wrong.