It can be, but the programs won't run! I am afraid that all the programs will have to be reinstalled, after Windows is reinstalled. However, if you can get hold of Norton Ghost, or a similar program, I would suggest that you get a new, higher capacity hard drive, and an external USB drive case for it. Then you can 'Ghost' a drive image of your C: drive to the new drive over the USB connection, and then physically swap the drives over. All should work well - I do this fairly regularly, whenever I can upgrade to a larger drive (currently waiting on a pair of 320GB 7200rpm drives for my next upgrade