[badlydrawnboy]

Somehow things got REALLY screwed up with my drive configuration/backup. My setup is 74GB Raptor as boot drive/sandbox, 400GB internal HD with system and user files, 400GB external FW for backup.

Yesterday I tried to run a Smart Update of the HD from the sandbox. I had installed some new system updates and things seemed to be running smoothly, so I wanted to update the HD. When I opened the application, a message came up saying "this is the first time you've opened this app etc." which is totally wrong. In retrospect, I probably should have stopped there... but I didn't. I ran the update, it seemed to finish. But at the end the application froze, and I had to force quit. Then I clicked the icon to open again and a grey question mark appeared on the icon. Bad. Again, I probably should have stopped here. But I downloaded a new copy of SuperDuper and then used it to back up my HD to my external FW.

The result is that somehow my internal HD and external FW are no longer bootable drives. If I click on the HDs, all that appears are two folders: Library (which only has Caches and Logs folders in it) and Users (which thankfully does have all of my user files). But neither drive has a system or applications and of course neither are bootable.

It seems like I should probably start from scratch with a new OS install (b/c the string of events that got me here indicate some system problem), but I'm not sure how to go about it with configuration of drives I've got. Would I do a clean install of OS X on the internal HD (not sandbox), run the updates, and then use migration assistant to bring in my user files from the external HD? But then what about applications? Neither the internal HD nor the external HD have them. If I try to use migration assistant to bring the application files from the sandbox to the HD, it will try to look for the library files associated with those apps - and they won't be on the sandbox.

I'm very confused and freaked out here, so I'd really appreciate any help you could offer!

Thanks,
Chris