Some of your phrasing is a bit hard to follow, but if I understand you correctly...
1 Re-format old drive (it assigned it drive E) --
Unnecessary. You can choose to format this drive when installing Windows.
2 Disconnect existing C drive and connect drive E and re boot computer, will it change the E to C automatically? --
Connect only your new drive and Windows will automatically make it the new "C" drive during installation..
3 Load O/S and programs on new C drive
4 Re-connect old C drive, will the computer now make it the E drive? --
Likely. You can name the disk with any letter you prefer within Windows.
5 Copy files from the E to new C drive and finish setting up new C drive
6 Clone old drive and done? --
Why are you cloning the old drive? You just reinstalled Windows and put all of your files, programs and settings on the new drive. A clone would duplicate your old drive (BSOD and all) and would put you back to square one.
Here is my advice:
1. Before you do
anything make a backup copy of all important data. Let me repeat that and expound on it because people usually ignore this advice. If
everything important is on your "C" drive, then use Acronis to make
an image file of the entire drive and save that
image file to a reliable third hard drive not used in this project. Do not
clone your "C" drive to this third hard drive unless you are willing to wipe out all data currently on that third hard drive and replace it with a copy of your old drive. Okay? Good.
2. If your end goal is a stable machine, I suggest you try to determine
why your machine is crashing before you reinstall the system. It might be something you can fix with minimal effort, like removing a bad driver. Or it might be a hardware failure, so reinstalling Windows would be a waste of time. Here is a great guide on how to determine why your system gave you a BSOD.
http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/w...mozTocId427576
3. If that didn't work, then try a reinstall as outlined above.