Essentially, Yes. Please see this recent thread for similar discussions on upgrading a hard drive:
http://forums.unix.com/showthread.ph...hlight=install
Build a new system (basic OS distribution with all the libs, systems files, utilities, etc.) Then, after this is up and running, bring over the applications, databases, utilities etc etc from the old system.
Normally, when I build systems I keep the apps and my special utilities in places like /usr/local so all those things are easy to find and keep partioned from the basic distribution.
Setting up filesystems with this in mind makes life very easy when its time to upgrade to a new OS