I upgraded my hard drive on my laptop last week by backing up my hard drive to CD. The software I used is called NERO, which you can download from http://www.ahead.de.

The only downside is it takes quite a few CD-Roms to do the backup. In my case it took 13 discs, but I have a 16x burner, so it didn't take too long. After you perform the backup, just remove the old drive and install the new. Next, insert the first disc of the backup and make sure your laptop is set to boot from CD. It will then format while restoring the data to your new drive.

In order to do this you will need a burner that can attach to your laptop. I've got a firewire-based yamaha.