SD stuck, other apps frozen, external HD wouldn't mount afterwards on 2.5 first run

[jayclapp]

I am using SD 2.5. I created a backup - all files on a acomdata firewire external hard drive that I had partitioned for a bootable clone. My first attempt failed, apparently because I hadn't turned off the sleep function. My 2nd attempt appeared to be successful as the two drives looked very similar, although the original HD has 105.29 GB whereas the clone has 103.85G.

I can't get the clone to boot up. I get the gray screen with the Apple logo and a spinning circle below. It just spins away for minutes with nothing else happening. I left it for 20-30 minutes and it had a kernal panic attack (haven't seen one of those in ages). Shut down and did a smart update. Same results. I don't know where to go from here. Can anyone help?