Upgrading Hard Drive and RAM

You don't need any clone software. Save your money & headaches as I've seen issues with some cloner apps.

As it turns out since Leopard Apple has included in their OS a tool which will do the same job! Called Migration Assistant. In fact they even incorporated it within the OS installer as the last step asking if you want to migrate the users, apps & data from another drive, system or even a Time Machine backup.

So here is what I would do as you likely haven't created ann emergency disk for your self either here. This gives you a little practice ;-}

Get a USB thumb drive (16 GB or larger) and using Disk Utility delete the FAT32 partition it has on it. Then, create a GUID partition map and a Mac OS Extended (Journaled) partition. Now using the OS installer you downloaded from the Apps store install the OS onto your USB drive. Once done you should be able to boot up with it. Cope to it the OS installer and any other utilities you might want to use to service your system.

OK, now on to the big job! Even though you have a backup how about getting a SATA to USB adapter so you can connect your new drive to your system just like how we did the thumb drive. We go though the same process as we just did but this time at the end when it asks you do you want to migrate files over we say yes and point to your internal drive. Let the system do it thing and when done your new drive should be a clone of your current drive. You'll still need to log into the Apps store to enable your apps you got from the store otherwise you're done.

Getting back to the emergency disk we created. Before I do a drive swap out. I like to run Disk Utility to repair the permissions & the disk so the files are in good shape before I migrate them. But you need to be doing this from the emergency disk as the boot drive, which is why we did it first.