How to upgrade hard drive without resinstalling Mac OS X

Hello everyone. I have a MacBook Pro 17'' with the original 160GB HD but now I want to upgrade my hard drive to a Seagate 500GB. My question is, how can I upgrade the HD without reinstalling and setting up all my stuff again?
Can this be done with TimeMachine and a Time Capsule? Any other option?
Thanks in advance.
David

yes, this can be done with Time machine. you'll need an external drive (could be a Time capsule or a directly attached drive). make backup of your current system. then replace the hard drive. then boot from the leopard install DVD and use the system restore utility in the utilities menu at the top to restore your old system from the backup onto the new hard drive. note that the new drive should be properly formatted: Mac os extended journaled format with GUID partition scheme. you'll most have to reformat the drive using disk utility first before using the restore utility.
another option is to put your old hard drive into an external hard drive enclosure (USB or firewire), install the new hard drive in the MB, then boot from the external drive and clone it to the new internal. you can use CCCloner or Superduper for cloning. again, reformat the new internal first. or you can clone your internal to an external (if you have a regular external drive but don't have an enclosure), then replace the internal drive, boot from the external and clone it back to the internal.
Message was edited by: V.K.

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