Installing new hardrive in Macbook Pro - HELP!

[WizardHowl]

Hey Guys,

I have a Macbook pro that I bought in the fall of 2006. I would like to upgrade my hardrive from a 160 gb HD to a 320 GB hardrive. I got this one: Hitachi Travelstar 320GB SATA 5400 RPM 8MB Buffer Mobile OEM Hard Drive.

The physical part of replacing the drive looks challenging and I'll probably take it to my local apple repair center to do it for me.

My question is how do I go about transferring my hardrive? Is there such a thing that would allow me to not have to reinstall everything over again, INCLUDING the OS? If there is how would this work? I think I'm looking for something that will make an image out of my hardrive and be able to transfer it to my new hardrive, but I don't know how to even do that, and I'm not sure the progression I should take. Transfer things to my new HD before I install it in my macbook pro?

Also, if I have the apple repair center do it, that shouldn't mess up my applecare warranty right?

Thanks for your help!

 

[Mini-Mac]

This is just an idea...

What about using a MobileMe account from Apple? I think you get 60 days FREE if you don't already have either a .Mac or MobileMe account already. You get 20 Gigs of their server space on a network-mountable drive called an iDisk. Also, your email, contacts and iCal stuff are all backed up to the system automatically, if I remember correctly. Yes, all of my information is in their online server. With your 60-day trial, you get 20 GB's of combined email and file storage, 200 GB's of data transferring each month and a few MobileMe neat features. Soon you'll be able to share email attachments that are too large for email by utilizing the iDisk feature. In future, iDisk will send messages with links for those attachments, etc. that are too large for email. Also, another possibility is buying a cheap external hard disk that is USB 2.0 compliant. You could then utilize Time Machine (in the System Preferences) to automatically backup all your data. Then, when you get your new internal hard drive installed, you simply setup Time Machine when all your formatting and reinstallation of OS X 10.x is complete. Good luck with the hard disk upgrade!

 

[WizardHowl]

Thanks minimac!

I do have an external hardrive.

Is it possible to transfer everything without reinstalling the OSX? I chipped in on a family license with a friend who is now across the country.

Thanks!