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).

[ Reply to This | # ]

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.

[ Reply to This | # ]

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

[ Reply to This | # ]