Just a note, I'm pretty sure you can only restore a bootable copy from a Time Machine backup if your backup includes the system files. That is, if you've set Time Machine to exclude "System files and applications" in the Time Machine preference panel, OS X isn't smart enough to install the OS on a blank partition and pull everything out of the backup at the same time.

DRM

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A good point. I guess in this case you would first have to install OS X and your applications onto the blank partition, which you should still be able to do even if your main hard drive has failed (as long as you have their original install discs).

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In fact, this just happened to me when my MacBook's internal HD crashed. I simply replaced the drive, reinstalled Leopard, applied the system updates, and used Migration Assistant to move the data from my external Time Machine drive. I would like to point out that at first, I forgot that I had excluded the system files from my backup, so I tried to select my Time Machine backup when I installed Leopard. It actually let me do this, and then hung at the screen where it shows your backup recovery progress. I was pretty concerned until I realized what was going on.

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Woops... that last comment was a reply to DylanMuir's.

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