Hard Drive upgrade. Clone vs. Fresh Install.

I'm about to replace the hard drive in my Mid 2009 2.53ghz 15 inch MBP and I'm wondering what would be the best way to go about it. Is there any advantage to a clean install of OS X then restoring from my Time Machine Backup? Or should I just use Carbon Copy to clone the drive then swap it in ?

I'll be replacing the factory 250gb 5200rpm drive with a 500gb 7200rpm Seagate Momentus XT hybrid drive.

TIA

I just prefer to use CCC / SuperDuper to do mine.
It's more of a personal preference tho. TimeMachine is probably a bit easier.

My personal experience:

For fastest boot times - Use the clean install, restore from Time Machine method.

I've done it both ways (Carbon Copy Cloner and Time Machine) several times and the best results are as I stated above. Others may disagree. The standard disclaimer applies: Your mileage may vary.

Clean install it is. Do I need to format the drive before I install in in the machine or will the OS install take care of that for me ?

You will need to format the drive first using Disk Utility. If you have a spare external USB carrier, the formatting and preparing would be much easier. Or if you had one of these. Great buy for $27.99. I have one and it comes in handy over and over again.

Well last night I attempted the drive replacement. Put the new hdd in an USB enclosure, erased & formatted. Installed the drive booted off the factory OS X (Snow Leopard) DVD. I attempted to restore from my Time Machine backup, everything seemed to be going normally but the process never completed. It hung on %75.1 done with 30 min. remaining. I retried after a fresh erase and format, this time it said it was complete and to reboot, but upon reboot it said that the installation of OS X was incomplete and to re-install.

Next I attempted to install off the DVD without involving the Time Machine backup. Ofcourse, erasing and formatting again. This time it hung on 27 min. remaining. I gave it ample time, 3+ hours and it didn't budge from 27 min.

Am I missing some critical step in preparing the new HDD for the OS install or do I just have a bad hard drive? Disk Utility recolonizes the new hard drive with out issue, both in the USB enclosure and when installed in the MBP.

This evening I'm going to try again, but this time use Carbon Copy Cloner.

Did you partition the drive, even if for only one partition and bit map selecting GUID under Options? And it happens OS X will not install on an external at times and external drives must be partitioned.

If it helps, popped an SSD in Mac Pro, formatted and partitioned and GUID partition map established, used Restore under Disk Utility to clone OS X.6.5 from second internal hard drive. Worked, but woeful boot times, 75 seconds and slow applications opening.

Put Snow Leopard DVD in and did an install over the top of OS X.6.5 which you can do with booting from the disc. Installed OS X.6.3, version of the disc, updated to OS X.6.5 using Combo Updater and everything now perfect.

I did not partition the new HDD, just formated it. That's probably what went wrong. Hopefully I'll be getting to bed with a new working drive before 4am today. Thank you for the help!