Replacing the hardrive/Data Migration Question

I am new to this forum.

I am replacing my stock 120GB HD with a WD 320GB HD (Scorpio).

Just wondering if there are any best practices with regards to getting the data to and from the drive currently in my machine to the newest. I know I am probably opening pandora's box by asking for this because everyone has an idea on how to do it and i know alot of it is not uniform.

This is the link that apple provides for the physical DIY installation:

http://manuals.info.apple.com/en/Mac...dDrive_DIY.pdf

The one thing I cannot find is a DIY guide the how to do the transfer of data. I know Migration Assistant is one way to get it done ( but I am sort of stuck on what comes 1st...sort of the chicken or the egg syndrome).

Take out the harddrive and a fresh reinstall on the new HD is another method then copy files.

Others say clone 1st...then do the Harddrive upgrade using a 3rd party.

I am pretty sure I can do the physical part...im probably overthinking the data transfer portion.

Any help is appriciated.

The easiest thing to do would be to install the new hard drive, move your existing drive into an external enclosure and then boot from it. Using a program like SuperDuper!, you can just run a backup from the now external drive to the now internal drive, reboot the computer and you're good to go.

If you don't intend to keep the old drive handy in an external enclosure, you can just purchase a little adapter that allows you to hook up any hard drive externally, like this one.