Making a mirror copy of my HDD

Hi guys!

Could someone please tell me what's the best way to make a full copy of my HDD into another HDD connected by USB?

I will soon change my HDD on my mac and for that I will buy a case for the new drive, connect it by usb, then do the mirror copy and when that is finished I switch the old drive to the case and the new drive that just got mirrored to the mac.

Thanks!

 

And how should I do it?
Put the new hdd already in the mac and boot up from the old hdd on the enclousure and then proceed with the cloning or the other way around?

 

Right, tought so.
One more question.
Buying a USB 3.0 enclousure will give me faster speeds on a 2.0 port or want make any difference at all?

 

I only want to make a one time cloning. Do I need the paid version for that?
CCC does the same good job?

 

Thanks!
The HDD should get here this week and now I just need to buy the enclousure.