Account privs & SD!; crash recovery with .DMGs?

[DrDan in MA]

Thanks Greg -- some followups if you will, in boldface. Writing from work, so pls pardon any disjointedness

If you want to start from CD, you'd use your Tiger/Panther CD/DVD to start the machine. Then, choose "Disk Utility" from the Installer menu. (NOTE - if you're dealing with Panther, you must NOT use the Tiger DVD to restore Panther. Use the other technique below.)
OK. Best find the Panther CD then. :-)

With that, I'd first erase *and zero* the internal drive to clean it up. THAT's gonna take some nerve, and confidence that the SD! backup will go. Then, use the "Restore" Tab to restore from the external drive to the internal. I'm vaguely surprised at this -- not using SD to write back onto the HD? Well OK.

If you want to use the Tiger DVD, you'll need to upgrade to Tiger. To do that, also do the Disk Utility erase and zero of both data and free space. Then, clean install Tiger to the drive. I'm guessing it would be "bad form" -- or much worse, because of HW specificity -- to attempt to upgrade my Ti-Pbg4 to Tiger by using the disks that came with the Mini...? Happy to buy a fresh copy if need be; I'm ultimately gonna buy a new laptop that's already supplied with Tiger, anyway. So... will it work if I just use the Mini's disks? (I'm betting not) When it prompts to migrate data/applications from an old mac, point it at the FireWire drive. It'll import your applications and settings.Got it. Sounds like this will do the Right Thing.

Finally, you can also try erasing and zeroing, (after having booted from what? Hate to sound dumb but there it is) :-) then booting from the LaCie and using SD! to copy back.Could I try this, having booted the PB from the Mini's Tiger CD, but not having tried to restore the PB's hard disk from it, or to install Tiger on the PB?