Can I use disk utilitiy recovery to clone original hdd to a new one

Question

Hi,
My original hdd refuses to boot up, and using disk utility via recovery mode to try and fix it just gives me an error "disk utility stopped repairing the drive, salvage data and format etc." giving an error about invalid node structure or something. Tried using target disk mode with a friend's mac when I was at work but the drive didn't even want to mount. Assuming it's about to die, I have just bought a new hdd (XT Hybrid) and since my mac is pre-Lion era (2010 model) I don't have a built in recovery mode, but strangely enough hooking up my old hdd with a dock and option-booting to it I can still access the recovery HD partition on it.
So I was thinking if i can essentially "clone" my original hdd to the new one using the restore tab on disk utility, and try using disk repair on it to get it working? or is there another app I can use that will do this (being mindful that I don't have access to another mac or the OS on the HDD to run it, so it'll have to be "live", and preferably free)
Or should I just cut my losses and just put a fresh install on it...
Yes I do have a time machine backup, but there's two reasons I want to see if this works - one is that although time machine is quite up to date (within a week I'm guessing, can't remember), it's obviously won't have the new content created during the day(s) before I was able to plug in my external hdd, and secondly since I don't have access to another mac to create a lion install usb drive, I'll have to use the internet recovery, and knowing my internet connection, 4gb download would take probably overnight and nearly a whole day to finish (assuming it doesn't drop out).
Thanks in advance.
Roy.

Answer 1

Tell you what you do
Get out your 10.6 disk, buy a IDE/SATA to USB adpater cable for $12-$20.
Swtich the drives
http://eshop.macsales.com/installvideos/
c boot off the 10.6 disk and Zero erase the new drive to map off bad sectors, format GUID with OS X ext. journaled.
Drives, partitions, formatting w/Mac's + PC's
install 10.6, differnt name user Admin account use, software update fully, option click on purchases and reinstall Lion and update.
install programs from fresh sources, and migrate the user account  back from your TM drive just to minimalize contamination from older OS X or programs on the bad drive.
if it goes badly, you can log into admin account and delete the user, try again
next get yourself Data Rescue $99 and hook up the bad drive, run that against it and send the output to another drive, then pick through the files.
 Data recovery efforts explained
if migration on the TM drive doesn't work, you can run Data Rescue on that too, a lot more files to pick through.
consider cloning your boot drive, it's a much better option than TM
 Most commonly used backup methods explained
If you dont want to go the 10.6 disk route your screwed unles you have a copy of the Recovery HD on a USB, you can copy it from another Mac
http://osxdaily.com/2011/08/08/lion-recovery-disk-assistant-tool-makes-external- lion-boot-recovery-drives/
https://support.apple.com/kb/dl1433
 Cheat sheet to help diagnose and fix your Mac