Upgrading HD question

Carbon Copy Cloner or Migration Assistant if you have an available backup. Either way you'll need some sort of external enclosure.

 

It's not a dumb question. You can get an enclosure with USB, Firewire or both. I always buy drives and enclosures that have USB 2.0, FW400 and FW800, for maximum compatibility.

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other World Computing/MSTG800U2K/

 

You could, it provides a bit better transfer speed, although they are a bit more expensive.

 

Depends on how much money you want to spend. I don't really see the need for FW, others do.

 

That is definately the best way to go for any external hard drive you plan to use long term, between multiple computers, or if you will have multiple computers throughout the service life of the hard drive.

Some hard drives will soon be (or may already) available in USB 1, 2, and 3 (3 is significantly faster and becoming a standard slowly) and FW 800. I would not be surprised if some upcoming drives even added eSATA. It's worth a few bucks to get as many inputs as you can.