...well, it's never going to be the fastest of machines, but if he wants to keep it (and if it's otherwise physically OK, why not?), then the cost (assuming 500GB) is going to be in the region of £35 - £50 depending on whether HDD or SSD.
Frankly, if you're going to risk the clone, and fall back on re-imaging if it doesn't work, then the extra £15 for a cheap 500GB SSD (rather than HDD) is probably well worthwhile (even if the laptop interface is SATA2 rather than SATA3).
Unless you have a "host" machine somewhere to which you can add two additional drives for the cloning process, then you'll have to budget for a USB disk caddy as well (though not expensive, see the links already posted).
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