New HDD...options?

Alright, so I have come to the sad realization that my HDD is way to small...it's a 180 GB IDE HDD and it is getting to the point where I am having to uninstall older games to install new ones. I don't want that. Does anyone know how I can transfer my OS along with all of my saved date from my old HDD to a newer, larger, SATA one?

Also, my friend said that I could buy an external HDD that basically acts like a large stationary flash drive. Speaking of flash drives, couldn't I just use two 8 GB flash drives and keep them plugged in and use them as extensions of my HDD for music and other things to lighten the load for my HDD?

1- Yes you can clone your OS to another hard drive using Norton Ghost and I think Acronis True Image can do that too.

2- I wouldn't recommend using flash drives to replace a hdd, because usb 2.0 is slow even compared to ide hdd and 16 GB isn't much. Why not just buy an internal sata hard drive ?