Installing internal hard drive - Questions!

I'm looking to replace my internal hard drive on my early 2008 macbook pro. I used time machine to clone (?) my current internal hard drive on to an external one, what is the process to copy this to the new one when I install it?

A BIG question for me is that I have my current hard drive partitioned for Virtual Box (windows virtual machine), how will the installation of a new internal hard drive affect this?

Anything else I need to consider?

Thanks!

 

Anyone? Is this posted in the right section?