Upgrading current C-drive to larger drive

I’m new to this idea of “cloning” when I tried to look it up, it said that it would create and image of the disk and was good for backing up data and such.  Was that definition true? or is it a complete functional copy of the original?  Will the clone have the operating system, drivers and software along with any updates?  Essentially, can I use that program to clone my old hard drive and then remove the old hard drive and use the new one as if it were the one I was using all along?

I really hope I’m making sense here.  I feel like I keep running in circles.