Interesting thread. I too am planning to upgrade my hard disk in my MacBook Pro. I have an external firewire drive that I have been using as a Time Machine backup. Apple claims that it can be used to restore to a blank drive after booting from the install disk for OS X and using the utilities on the CD.

I have a dead superdrive and have one coming from iFixit and will replace the dead one at that time and do the upgrade as well.

I will let you know how it works.