Apple :: Spare Hard Drives - Home Replacement - And Full Disk Imaging

I currently have everything I ever need on one laptop -- a mid-2009 15" MBP. Having had a slew of hard drive problems over the past few years, and given that such disks are regularly the source of problems (before, say, a logic board), I'm considering purchasing a spare hard drive and keeping it, or the one in my machine, as a backup disk for the day when my current drive dies. The closest Apple store is ~45 minutes away, and I'm perfectly capable of doing my own computer surgery. An inoperable laptop would be a pretty significant problem for me.

So basically, my questions are twofold:

- From perusing the hard drive threads a few months back here in the Apple forum, it seems like WD's Scorpio Blue (500 GB, 5400 RPM) is the popular choice. Given the time that's elapsed since its release (and the thinning of hard drive threads after the last "big one" I found), are there any other drives, SSD or standard, that can beat it in terms of power usage / noise / performance overall without gouging the bill too much?

- I use Time Machine with a Time Capsule to keep everything nice and backed up, but an HD/SSD swap would be best done with an image of my entire drive. Is Carbon Copy Cloner still the go-to for that?