Hardware/software/OS upgrade: One approach?

[Don Levey]

Short question:
Is there a way that I can take the RPM database from an existing FC2
machine, plop it onto a new FC4 machine, and run some version of a 'yum
update' to make sure all the packages I had installed on the old machine are
installed on the new?

Background:
I lost a partition on my home server a short while ago.  As a result, I've
decided to replace the old drive with a pair of RAID-1 drives.  The old
machine is running FC2; I want to be at FC4.  My plan was to take out the
old drive completely, install PC4 on the pair of new drives, and migrate the
old data over from the old drive.  Ideally, I'd like to make sure the
software I've installed on the old machine gets installed to the new one
also.  Is the old RPM database the key to this procedure?

Thanks for your help,
 -Don