yea that is a good question i want to hear more on how to do this tooo

i am new and really loving ubuntu, also there is just somethings i am upside
down with and really could use alot of help on the terminal, i am pretty good in
windows but the terminal sure gives me a challenge.

This is not at all difficult. The new hard drive should come with a software
CD. The software on the CD will enable you to clone your existing drive to the
new one, byte for byte. Use the CD as you would a LiveCD. You will want to
choose the 'create a boot drive' option. Allow some time for the job. My 80G
drive takes about 6 hours.

I do remember something called Maxblast
or something like that when I bought a new harddrive a while back.
This time I have an older drive, but I'll try to find the software. I
was hoping there might even be a "config" file that shows the present
set-up and might be used as an "update checklist" by Ubuntu...

You could use clonezilla. It works similar to Norton Ghost. You can
download it from SourceForge.net or http://www.clonezilla.org.