How do I clone my boot volume to a new internal hard drive?

Hi,
I record HD shows from my digital antenna using EyeTV 500, not to mention producing DVDs from my 8mm and miniDV home movies. I seem to be eating up disk space at an alarming rate.
Does anyone have a general solution to storing large amounts of video?
My current setup is:
Original Internal HDD--250GB Maxtor "6Y250M0"
Second Internal HDD--500GB Maxtor "6H500F0"
External Firewire HDD--1 TB LaCie Big Disk Extreme "LUN 0"
I've just bought a new Hitachi 1TB DeskStar SATA Drive (for the amazing price of $359 after a $30 rebate at OWC: http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Hitachi/OBD0A34915/). I plan to remove the original 250 GB drive and install the new Hitachi 1TB drive in that bay.
My preference would be to make the Maxtor 500GB drive my new OS and Applications drive and the new 1TB internal drive my primary media drive. I should have room to clone the original 250GB drive to the second internal Maxtor 500GB drive, then swap out the 250GB drive for the new drive.
The System folder is only 1.64 GB, the Library Folder is 11.9 GB, and the Applications Folder is 7.09 GB. The Current boot drive (250GB) has a capacity of 233 GB, with 139.09 GB used and 94.65 GB available.
The specific questions I have are:
1) If I clone the current boot drive (250GB) to the 500GB Maxtor Drive, do I have to clone it to a partition the same size as the original (250GB), or, when I Restore using disk utility, will it just become a 500 GB volume?
2) Is it better to put the System, Apps, and Library in their own Partition, as opposed to having them share the same volume with a lot of other files?
2) ...if so, how do I calculate how big a partition I'll need for the system and apps on the Maxtor 500 GB drive?
3) What's the best way to do all this? What pitfalls do I need to watch out for?
4) I plan on upgrading to OS 10.5 (Leopard) when it comes out next month. (Does this change anything?)
Thanks!
Ashwin

The very best way to clone one drive to another on a Mac, is to use a simple utility called Carbon Copy Cloner. It is available online, free as a download. Just google for Carbon Copy Cloner, download it (2.2 mb), and use it. It is really great and you will be happy with it.

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