Some questions on HD upgrade/replacement for late 2008 UMBP

Hello All - it's HD upgrade time.
My Late 2008 15” UMBP’s 250GB Hitachi hard drive is beginning to fill up so I’ve purchased a new Hitachi 500GB HD to install into my machine. I got it at OWC
Here is the drive:
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Hitachi/0A72335/
I’ve done some searching on the forums and on Google for installing a new hard drive and getting my data from the old hard drive to the new one. I understand the actual physical installation of the HD, but am a bit confused on how to transfer the data from my old HD to the new one.
I have a Super Duper Clone of my system on an external HD. Can I just install the new drive into the MBP and then use this Clone to install onto the new HD? What will happen when I boot my MBP with the new HD? Will it freak out?
I seem to remember reading from some more experienced users on this forum that it is best to do a fresh install of OS X and migrate data rather than just copy the Cloned data onto the new HD.
The question I have that I could not find anywhere else is this:
If I decide to do a fresh install of OS X onto the new drive - rather than use my Super Duper Clone of my old HD am I correct in the following?
I have to use the Leopard install discs that came with my MBP (10.5.6) and install that first. Then do I have to upgrade it to 10.5.8 before installing SL? No surely not. ?
Then I have to use the Snow leopard upgrade disk to install OS X 10.6.0?
Should I make sure the new HD is updated to 10.6.5 before I migrate my data from the old drive???
How do I upgrade the SL to the newest version? Combo updater?
If anyone can provide a comprehensive and detailed and step by step list of what I should do I would really appreciate it.
Am I making this harder than it should be???
Thanks
M.

I have a Super Duper Clone of my system on an external HD. Can I just install the new drive into the MBP and then use this Clone to install onto the new HD?
Absolutely. That will work just fine.
I seem to remember reading from some more experienced users on this forum that it is best to do a fresh install of OS X and migrate data rather than just copy the Cloned data onto the new HD.
That would be true if the clone on your external drive were from the drive in a different computer model. Since it's a clone of the previous drive that was in the very same computer, it should work perfectly and there's no reason not to clone it onto the new drive.
There's no need to reinstall everything from scratch or to reinstall the OS from scratch and then migrate your data from the external drive.
If you want to proceed with caution,
1. Use Disk Utility to *Repair Disk* and *Repair Permissions* on the original drive before removing it, to make sure all is in good order on it.
2. Clone it to the external drive, or update the existing clone incrementally.
3. Boot to the external disk as a test to make sure it's in good shape.
4. Remove the existing internal drive and install the new one.
5. Boot to the external disk, use Disk Utility to format the new drive, open SuperDuper on the external drive, and clone it to the new internal drive.
You should now be good to go.
Message was edited by: eww

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