How should I go about replacing HDD on ThinkPad T60

[warp4dennis]

My ThinkPad T60 has some 4 years of material stored away on it, and it's rather small by today's
standards.
So I bought a new HDD that is about 4x the size of the older one.
Now I'm trying to figure out how to go about 'skinning the cat'.
What's the best way to get the Windows 7 OS files onto this new Drive?
Is there some way to copy the entire Win 7 folder from one HDD to the other, or should I get
out my Windows 7 CD/DVD and do an Install from scratch, and then go through the pain of trying
to download from the Internet all the Win 7 updates that I can find there?
I do have an adapter that allows me to connect either HDD to my ThinkPad over a USB cable.
This I have used in the past to view and download files from previously removed Drives that are
no longer in service and are stored away for safe keeping.

 

[samuria]

You have two options one is clone the old HD to the new one which normally lets you grow partitions as it copies it should then boot and work as if nothing has changed. Option two which is pain but better is a clean install which will work a lot better and well worth it

 

[Megahertz07]

As Samuria advised, to clone is the easiest way. Use Macrium Software | Your Image is Everything

As also suggested, to do a clean install or a Factory Restore is the best solution. Over the years, windows degrades due to install / uninstall, register gets giant with a lot of useless information.
For the updates: MS releases SP2 for Windows 7 - Windows 7 Help Forums