Reinstalling OS X

Hello,

I have a macbook that is running on OS X V 10.5.8 (Leopard). I plan to replace the 160gb hard drive that came with my macbook and install a 500gb hard drive in its place. When I was reading up about the installation process, it showed that after installing the new hard drive, I will be required to reinstall OS X from the installation CD.

Here is the problem: I do not have the original OS X cds. My question is, if I buy a license of Snow Leopard, can I install that instead of OS X? I was anyways planning to upgrade to Lion and that would mean I need to have Snow Leopard. Can someone please confirm if it will work to reinstall using Snow Leopard when I didnt have it to begin with?

OK.

A few things. You could buy a 2.5" sata - USB enclosure for the disk.
e.g. Newegg.com - Vantec NexStar TX 2.5" SATA to USB 2.0 External Hard Drive/SSD Enclosure - Model NST-210S2-BK
Not a recommendation - just an example.

Put your new disk in the enclosure and use something like Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper to make an exact copy disk-to-disk.

Then you just put the new disk in the Mac and put the old disk in the enclosure for backup/storage etc.

Doing this means you have no need to install the OS from scratch etc.

If you want to install Snow Leopard. Buy the retail disc (can sometimes be hard to find but it's out there).
You have several options (of them a couple are below):
1. Install Snow Leopard in-place on your existing disk then clone the new disk as above
2. Install the new blank disk, install Snow leopard then use the migration wizard to copy your docs, apps, settings etc from the old disk (in the enclosure)

Post back with any questions and welcome to the forum.

As an extra nugget of info - all the 'big cat' releases are classed as OSX, each just has a different 'point' release:
Puma (10.1)
Jaguar (10.2)
Panther (10.3)
Tiger (10.4)
Leopard (10.5)
Snow Leopard (10.6)
Lion (10.7)