help with HD upgrade on mini

i have been looking everywhere for a complete step by step on how to upgrade the mac mini hard drive.

i will be upgrading with a hitachi 7200rpm drive, however what application do i need to use to backup my system?

i would like to create a disk image of the 4200rpm drive on my external, then just copy the image over to the new hard drive. how do i do this?

if i cannot make an image, how can i backup everything to put it back onto the new hard drive. i do have lacie's silverkeeper... but what will that do for me?

Please help since i don't know what im doing... all i know is that i need to hold "c" when rebooting... but what the heck does that do?

TIA,
mike

Super Duper: http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html

Great program and well worth the money.

Or if you are on a budget:

Carbon Copy Cloner: http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html

bump TTT

I apologize, I assumed the idea that you download one of the two apps and read the documentation was implied. The majority of the steps for what you want to do are clearly covered in both products documentation.

To flesh it out a bit:

1) Download SuperDuper from http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDu...escription.html

2) Mount the dmg file and drag SuperDuper to the Applications folder

3) Read and follow the documentation in the dmg, Page 5 starts the step by step process of making a duplicate of one HD onto another.

4) Boot off the new HD to make sure the copy was sucessful.

5) Disassemble and replace you hard drive. If you need help on the disassembly try here: http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/82.0.0.html

6) Reassemble and reboot.

Alternatively you could google for "upgrade hard drive mac mini" and follow one of the 4 or 5 tutorials on the first page.

This is the one I liked the best:

http://www.sterpin.net/uk/ddMacMiniuk.htm

Great! Exactly what i was looking for. Thanks for all the help. Now time to rip open the mini =)