First Post - Questions on upgrading MacBook HD

I recently bought a WD Scorpio Black 320GB 7200rpm HD to replace my stock 80GB HD.

I was going to just use time machine and restore from a backup on my external USB drive. However, for some reason, time machine won't make a back up (IDK).

Is it possible to remove my old HD, put it in an IDE enclosure and plug it in via firewire 400 after I've installed the new drive. This way, I would assume, I could just install the new drive, install Mac OS X, then restore everything from my old drive in the enclosure, directly through firewire.. but I'm not sure at all.

Any advice/steps? Am I completely off?

I have a white MacBook, purchased in Jan of '07:
2.0Ghz Core 2 Duo, 1GB RAM, 80GB, Mac OS X Snow Leopard v10.6.2

Thanks!!

You can use a program called CarbonCopyCloner. Works like a charm!

Well, the thing is, I'm not sure if my WD Passport drive can be used to boot from since it's USB, otherwise I'd be golden and CCC would work fine.

Also, I have content on my passport; would it need to be empty to be used? I have nowhere to put it, haha.

Your WD Passport can be made bootable by using Disk Utility. Format it as HFS Journaled, GUID scheme. Then download and use Carbon Copy Cloner as has been suggested.

Regards.