Failed restore from TM, disk now reporting problems.

Hello,
I have, unfortunately, landed in a bad position... My Macbook was last backed up last May with Time Machine. A few days ago, the internal hard drive in the Macbook went bad and was replaced with a new one by Apple. They installed 10.5.5 on the machine, so the welcome video starts up when I turn it on. At the genius bar, they told me to use the time machine backup option after the welcome video to restore my files. However, when I select that option, the window does not show the external hard drive I use to store the time machine backup.
Since no drive or backup was listed in that window, I assumed that this problem was caused by an incompatibility between 10.5.5 (which Apple installed on the new hard drive) and the older version of the system stored in my TM backups from last May (maybe 10.5.3?). Plus, I can see all the TM backups when I plug the drive into my other computers.
I booted the Macbook off the OS 10.5 DVD, and I selected the Restore from TM Backup option. This quickly pulled up the backup info from the external hard drive, and it began the restore process. Toward the end of the restore, the process failed, and it suggested I restart and try again. I restarted (booting off DVD again) and tried to restore again. This time, it told me that it can't access the files and the disk may have problems. I plugged the disk into another computer and ran "verify" in disk utility. It said "invalid index key," the volume needs to be repaired- Error: Filesystem verify or repair failed."
Here's my problem- I'm not sure that I want to mess with repairing the drive, as I don't want to potentially screw up the TM backup file structure. I don't have another copy of the info in these TM backups, since the original internal hard drive crashed and this is my restore option. Should I use a program like Superduper to make a copy before attempting a repair on the external drive? Is it likely a repair on the drive will screw up the TM backup data? I'm not really sure how to proceed safely.
Any help is greatly appreciated!
Thanks for your time.
~ Dan

Hi, Glenn,
Thanks for the suggestions. As an update, I did two clones of the drive using SuperDuper onto two other external drives. Both of those clones were successful, but none of the time machine backup data pulls up through the Leopard DVD, Time Machine itself, or through Migration Assistant. Disk utility finds errors in the data on both of the clones, but fixing the errors doesn't help the situation in any way.
In efforts to clean up the disk errors or pull the data off the drives manually, I have used Disk Warrior, Data Rescue II, File Salvage, and Disk Utility. Unfortunately, none of these apps have worked as a fix. I can't even seem to salvage the individual files to transfer them manually, leading me to believe that Time Machine is a deck of cards when part of the files become corrupted... What is frustrating is that I was able to see all of the backup files when I began the first restore process. Now I can't see them at all. I've never had a problem with the external disk drive, and all the utility programs seem to indicate that the problems are with the files versus the drive.
Any other ideas on how to get these files extracted? Given the 60GB or so of data recorded on the disk, I know the info is sitting there somewhere... I just can't get to it.
Thanks for the help!

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Thanks for using Apple Support Communities.
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For more information on this, take a look at:
Time Machine: Troubleshooting backup issues
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3275?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US
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1) Yes - I have to do a clean reinstall - much other discussion on other forums has said this is what needs to happen for my particular sick Mac situation - so I already know this....
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1) Yes - I have to do a clean reinstall - much other discussion on other forums has said this is what needs to happen for my particular sick Mac situation - so I already know this....
First off, there is no such thing as a "clean" reinstall. Maybe an erase and install as the rest of your post suggests:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=607614
Secondly, a sick machine rarely needs an erase and install. I use it only to discover right away if there is a hardware issue with the computer as opposed to software.
2) Have already used carbon copy cloner to back up entire hard drive, files et al to an external hard drive...
Have you tested to make sure the clone is bootable?
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OT

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Hello,
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I recently needed to restore my ageing PowerMac G5 running Leopard from a Time machine backup.
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words to help others' search:
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I keep both images of my boot volume which is just OS and apps, and of my home directory. But I also have full regular backups as well. It is not "either or" but a matter of having backup sets that will work. And rotating those sets.
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