Best way to move HD contents before a sale?

My macbook has a 120GB hard drive. I'm looking to sell the machine shortly, and I'd like to have everything carefully backed up before doing so. The machine is running Time Machine, so the info is backed up there.

I'll probably be moving to another mac with a smaller HD. Is there any way that's better than Time Machine to move a (not full) 120GB HD to say an 80GB? Should I make a disk image?

I have a couple of external drives with enough space to clone the entire drive, so having somewhere to put it all isn't an issue.

mwpeters8182 said:

You probably could just copy over your home directory, and reinstall the programs you've got on there.

As for erasing the drive before sale, I think there's an option for multi-pass erase in disk utility on the Leopard CD. I'd check there. I'm not 100% sure, and I can't check since I've got my mac packed up to bring to work.

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Thanks. I'm not so much worried about the erasing. I'll do an erase and install of the OS before selling it. Just want to make it as easy as possible to make the other computer look and act like this one.

dmarch said:

I just did a restore from Time Machine backup to my newly installed HDD on my MPB. Very simple, just format & install OSX, then plug in your storage device.
Choose restore from Time Machine backup, and you're good to go.

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Cool. An I assume that as long as there isn't more info on the old drive than the size of the new drive, it won't be a problem (I'm going from a 120 to an 80, but the 120 isn't full).