using Vista full restore to install new HD?

Running Vista Business on T60. Just did a complete PC backup to an external HD connected to USB.

Now want to replace the internal HD with a brand new 320gb HD, and want to do a full restore using backup on the external HD. Not interested in doing a clean install or anything right now. Just want to get back to where I was, but with the new drive with more space. Help!

a) Do I have to reinstall Vista first, and then do the full restore, or could I do this by booting from my Vista Anytime Upgrade CD (if I could find it, which right now I can't)? I also have recovery CD's but was hoping to not have to use them for this.

b) Will the full restore force me to enter the license information, or will it all be taken care of automatically since it's the same PC from which I did the backup? If I do have to enter the license info, then I want to do this a different way so I can use the license as originally installed from the factory like the clean install guide suggests (I've ran the utility in the past that captures that information).

c) this isn't a priority for me, but since I'm going from 120gb to 320gb, is there a smart way that I should partition the drive, or just go with one big partition?


Maybe I didn't search hard enough, but I wasn't able to figure this out after having searched for a while. Thanks for your help.

By the way, my old internal HD is not dead. But I thought the idea of the full backup is to fully recover in the least painful way if there is a total HD crash.

Oh, one more thing. Do I need to format the new HD first somehow? (Hitachi 7k320)