Upgrading HDD, fresh OS install or restore from old HDD

Ill be upgrading my HDD in my MBP soon. The file structure is not damaged, all programs run smooth. I am only replacing because my current drive is starting to make noise and drives are cheap enough that I don't mind replacing as cheap insurance.

Anyhow coming from the PC world sometimes it was best to just do a fresh install. Is this the same for Macs ?

If there is nothing to be gained by fresh installing OSX I will just clone the new drive.


Thanks everyone.

Best option could well be popping the old drive in an external case and connecting, format the new hard drive, install Snow Leopard and use Migration Assistant to move things over to save all that re-installs, chasing serial numbers, re-activations etc.

If you do a fresh install you'll then have to download and apply all the updates since the version of OS X on your install disks. And then do the migrate. Or, just do a clone (CCC or SuperDuper). If everything is working fine, then there's nothing to be gained from a fresh install - general use of OS X does not lead to degradation.