Damaged Hard Drive, Can I Clone?

I have a damaged hard drive that does everything but boot my MBP, I can use it as an external drive and it works fine.  My question is when i get my new hard drive can i boot damaged hard drive in safe mode and clone it to new hard drive or will it transfer damage to new drive  Im fairly sure the damage is physical though...

Have you attempted a software solution to your non-booting problem?
Step by Step to fix your Mac
or will it transfer damage to new drive.  Im fairly sure the damage is physical though...
Well if there is damage to the data on the drive, then it's certainly going to transfer over.
Your best option would be to do a fresh install of 10.6 on the drive/new drive, then update...
Reducing bad sectors effect on hard drives
How to erase and install Snow Leopard 10.6
Next install your free iLife and any third party programs
Restoring your Free iLife (iPhoto, iMovie etc)
Then upgrade to the latest OS X version you were using via AppStore
Then install any third party programs from original sources.
Then cherry pick your files from the bad drive eliminating the corrupt ones, transferring manually out of the Music, Pictures, Documents etc., folders (do NOT use Migration or Setup Assistant against a corrupted drive/data.
(mind you have to transfer files into the same named user account, then likely have to reset #6 Users Permissions)
Then make plenty of backups/clones of this new install
Most commonly used backup methods

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