DIY HD upgrade

I'm thinking about getting this:

HD

and using carbon copy cloner.

Will that result in me being able to swap out my old drive and put the purchased one in my MacBook, turn it on, and it's like nothing changed?
Will applications with licenses run the same (specifically photoshop and lightroom)? Will this count as using a second computer, or will adobe consider this to be one and the same activation?

I have a late 2008 MB with 4GB Ram and a 250 GB drive right now. Does anybody have a different recommendation than the above HD?

Thanks for any advice or help.

Thanks for the reply.

My MB came with Leopard, and I have since upgraded to Snow Leopard. Do I use the SL disc?

So I am clear here, I will swap out the drive, and then turn on my MB with the SL disc in the drive and it will guide me through the rest (even though there will be no OS or anything on the new drive)?

Also, when I use time machine to bring in all my old stuff, do you know for certain that this will not count as a second activation with my Adobe products - PS and LR?

Lastly, I have an external HD hooked up to my MB right now that I use to store all of my LR photos. It is backed up via time machine, and also to another external HD. Will this drive show up when I try to restore with Time Machine, or will I have to copy it manually? Just curious, either way will be fine.

Thank you very much for the help.

eman said:

Put your new drive in an external hard drive and format the HD with disk utility. Then use CCC to clone the old HD to the new HD; your new HD can then be put in your macbook and everything will be as it was previous.

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Okay, will do.
How does this work with the Adobe licenses?
Does Adobe see this as a second activation? If so, how do I prevent that?
If not, what would prevent me from cloning my drive and putting it in more than 2 computers?

Thanks for the help.

iThinkergoiMac said:

+1 for the clone technique.

Because only the hard drive has changed, it falls below the threshold for what your Adobe apps will consider a "different computer". If, however, you changed the processor or GPU (not that you can on a MacBook anyway) or replaced the logic board, then they would think they're on a different computer.

This, of course, prevents you from cloning them to a different computer unless you uninstall (and deactivate) the previous install first.

The HDD in the kit is a 7200 rpm drive, which is great for performance. If you currently have a 5400 rpm drive, you'll see a small, but noticeable, improvement in startup/shutdown times and application launch times.

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Awesome. Thanks for the in-depth response.
I'm looking forward to a little performance improvement. I do have a 5400 rpm drive now. Also, I currently use an external drive connected via USB for my photos. I am hoping that I will see an improvement in photoshop and lightroom performance when I have the photos on the internal 7200 rpm drive.

Thanks for the help. That answered my questions.

dlep30 said:

I just installed this exact hard drive into my MacBook. My start up time and application launching time has improved. I could not quantify the improvement, however, it just feels faster.

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Good stuff. Mine is in the mail.
Did you use the CCC method recommended above?