New HD for Dell Notebook

I'm looking to replace the HD in my Dell Inspiron 8100 Notebook. What's the easiest (tried and true) method?

 

the easiest is certainly to back up any information/media you want saved, install the new hard drive and format and install the OS.

Alternatively, you could image your old hard drive to an external drive or CD/DVD using a backup program (Norton Ghost, Acronis TrueImage, Paragon Drive Back Up Pro) and then recover the image on the new drive

The latter will work if you dont want to lose any settings, but reformatting will ensure that you start out fresh and will most likely have your system performing better as it will be less cluttered.