I'll chime in... If you're looking for an easy-to-use program that will make a backup that you can restore onto a new hard drive, the most user-friendly piece of software I've used would be Acronis True Image. Ghost and other pieces of software can get the job done, but Acronis did it for me fast and easy with just 3-4 clicks.
As for registry cleaners, my advice would be to STAY AWAY! Ccleaner is a pretty light piece of software so you may not experience too many issues but a system's registry is very unique so I could never get behind the idea of using a registry "cleaner" to try and fix issues. I've seen these types of software cause more problems than fix honestly.
If you were happy with the performance of your machine before your hard drive failed, try to back up and restore the image. Otherwise, if you thought the OS was sluggish or had problems, I would take the opportunity to start fresh. In my experience, the thought of starting over is a lot worse than actually starting over - you'll find that you will only install what you still need as opposed to EVERYTHING you've installed in the past. Also, it's good to point out that you should back up important files first before trying to back up the entire image just in case the drive fails completely while attempting the backup.