New Hard drive,can I copy from old one?

HI there,
I'm installing a new hard drive on my imac, and I'll upgrade the OS to Leopard.
After it's installed, can I wook up my old drive as an usb disk, and copy APPS and files from there to my new disk with a new OS? Will it give me permissions to access my data on the old disk?

Just copying and APP directory from old disk to new, makes it automaticly installed on the new OS?

Thanks
MaC

Yes, you can put your old hard drive in an external USB case and copy contents such as documents and emails from it to your new hard drive. However, any applications that you had on the old drive will have to be reinstalled on the new drive.

You can also upgrade to Leopard by doing an "archive and install". See the following Apple KB article. Link This might be the best way to retain data and applications when upgrading.

Regards.

I dit it.
Clean install.
And I found out that moust AppS can be just copied. (copying the folder in Library folder too).
E-mail boxes just copied them too!
All works flawlasly!
Thanks!