Hard Drive upgrade - Clone?

I decided I would like to upgrade my hard drive on my MBP, 160GB just doesn't cut it anymore, I have plenty of external HDs but I would like a larger built in one. I could easily do it myself but I am still under warranty.

A local Apple certified service center can upgrade the HD to a 320GB for $205 plus $80 for installation. They offer a data transfer service for another $80. I didn't think to ask too many questions, but I am assuming they would just make a clone and then put that on the new drive right? So all my apps, preferences and everything would be saved.

I am not very familiar with images or clones, but I think I found a program that will do it Bombich Software: Carbon Copy Cloner would this work ok or are there other options? shoudl I just pay the extra $80 and have him do it?

The reason a hard drive swap out on a MBP is not do it yourself as it is with a MacBook is that the drive is more difficult to get at. However, many folks have swapped out the drive themselves without problems. You do need to be aware that if you decided to do it yourself and screw something up, your warranty could be voided. Here are some links you can browse to and see if you think it's something that you're capable of doing:

Link 1

Link 2

Link 3

As for your question about Carbon Copy Cloner, I use it all the time to clone my MacBook hard drive to an external. I have also used it to do restores. It works as advertised.

Regards.

Another way to clone the drive is to boot off the DVDs that came with your Mac (boot and hold down "C"), then select Tools > Disk Utility and you can "Restore" the internal drive from your external backup.