Swapping Hard Drives

[kmansinger]

I have a Imac 20 with a small 3.5 hard drive and I have bought a bigger 360 gig 3.5 hard drive to replace the old one. I have the new one in an external case with USB 2.0 right now. Is there some way I can transfer the entire contents of the old hard drive on to the new one and then swap out the old drive with the new drive and not miss a beat?
Thanks
Kman

[dukebound85]

time machine

[Cave Man]

I'd go with Carbon Copy Cloner.

[kmansinger]

Thanks
I downloaded Carbon Copy and now I need to partition my hard drive. I went to Disk Utility but I don't know which format style to use. I know I need to use Apple Partition Map but not sure which format to choose.
Kman

[Cave Man]

If your iMac is Intel-based, then you need to initialize it with GUID partition table, not APM (which is for PowerPC cpus). HFS+ with journaling enabled.

[kmansinger]

I have a power pc. Same format?

[Cave Man]

Yes, HFS+ with journaling and Apple partition map.