Reinstall programs for Hard Drive upgrade?

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I'm not the brightest candle in the drawer here! I've done a search but couldn't pull anything.

I'm upgrading my MacBook from it's 60 gig HD to a 160. I have also bought an external enclosure to put my 60 gig in when it comes out. Once my new 160 is installed can I just copy the old hard drive back to the new one once I have reinstalled OS X? Will it overwrite programs that have plug-ins etc?

One of my friends mentioned that I'd have to reinstall EVERY program that I've added that didn't come with the computer but I can't imagine Mac making it that difficult. Thanks for any tips!
 
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Your Mac's Specs
15in i7 MacBook Pro, 8GB RAM, 120GB SSD, 500GB HD
You'll need something like SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner to make a bootable copy of your hard drive, then it should work fine.
 
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I have gone for SuperDuper - it was very easy to clone my hard drive to an external hard drive (300Gb) and make it bootable.

I have not yet bought my replace hard drive, so I have not copied it across yet.
 
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Thanks Stretch and Ram! I just downloaded the free version of SuperDuper. Is that all I need?

Could someone please just give me a quick step by step on how to "clone" my hard drive over when I put the new one in? Thanks again for your help.

Lee
 
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Do you have to clone a bootable copy before you take your hard drive out and put the new one in or can you do it via an external once I have it in it's enclosure? I'm so confused!
 
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Man I hate to keep asking all these questions but I'm going to try to do this tomorrow. Let me see if I have this straight....I can pull out my old 60 gig, put it in my external enclosure, install the new 160, boot up and installation CD's. Then can I clone my old hard drive (now an external) with SuperDuper or Carbon Clone, both of which I downloaded? And then, once cloned, copy it back to the new and effective overwrite everything and I have it set just like the way I left it, settings and all? Phew sorry, just nervous as this is my first time attempting something like this.

As always, thanks for any help!
 

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