How do i do a complete backup of my MacBook Pro?

Want to download everything off my hard drive onto a portable drive. Then I want to transfer my wifes MBP hard drive to my MBP. Whats the easiest way to accomplish this?

another way of doing it:
take off your wife's hard drive and put it an external usb enclosure.
plug that enclosure in your macbook then open disk utility and erase that drive.
run carbon copy ( a free download if you don't have it ) and clone your drive to your external drive.
take the external drive out and install it in your macbook.
turn your macbook back on and you're back in business.
only do this if you don't need anything from your wife's hard drive.

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