How do I install all my old programs and data from an old system folder after I have reinstalled the same OSX system after a crash?

Question

The system is OSX10.5.8 Leopard on a 2009 imac. A new system was installed from the installation disks and the original system saved to a folder.
I need to use my Adobe programs, rescue my email, i-tunes and iphoto data.  The disk utility indicates that my Time Machine back-up disk is damaged and I don't want to take a risk of having Time Machine erase my hard drive and try to reinstall the exact system existing at the time of the crash.  There was over 650 gb of stored files that I was copying and removing from the drive at the time it crashed. The total size of the original system file is still about 650 Gb.
I would prefer to go back in Time Machine and only rescue the programs as most of the files have been copied to external hard drives, but I can't access the back-up hard drive from the new version of the Time Machine.  Or by I don't want the Time Mchine to start copying the new operating system which would include all the data in the old system file. Time Machine was working fine at the time of the crash.

Answer 1

No, the disk was backed up with time machine a few hours prior to the crash.  I was unable to open the computer when I tried to restart it- got a grey screen with the spinning disk- after a few minutes the screen would go black and would reboot continuously, but not load any images or programs. I started the computer from the 10.5.4 installation disks and checked both the time machine external hard drive and the Imac internal drive with the disk utilities. Both showed as damaged --the internal drive and permissions were repaired, but the external drive (time machine back-up)  was damaged and not repairable by disk utilities. I don't believe that the external drive for Time Machine was connected to the computer at the time of the crash as I was copying files to a different hard drive drive. And I was not having any problems with the TM back-up drive prior to the crash.
I accessed the Imac internal disk by firewire (as a target disk) and copied as many data files as I had room for on my external hard drives available.  And I deleted quite a few files from the imac internal drive (mostly just jpegs, duplicate tifs, etc--nothing that was used by i-photos, i-tunes or the Mail program).
Then I installed a new OSX10.5.4 system from the installation disk and the old system was moved to a folder on the hard drive.  I previousy had had the option to reinstall the complete system from Time Machine when I connected that drive and booted with the installation disks with the C key depressed.  But it didn't seem like a good option because I was unsure of the condition of that external disk and whether it would be able to reinstall my data correctly, once it had erased my internal hard drive. 
I'm considering buying some new external hard drives and backing up the present system to time Machine (so I'll still have my old data in the old system folder).  And then I would try using the old Time Machine back-up to try to reinstall the sytem previous to the crash.  That back-up would reinstall about 700gb of data and operating software and programs which sounds like a lengthy back-up.  Since I have never used Time Machine to do a full reinstallation (I've only used it for individual files), I'm reluctant to do anything rash.
I'm a professional designer (with a deadline) but I can still use my Illustrator and Photoshop by opening them from the old system folder and saving the files to an external drive.  So it's not neccessary to do anything hasty except to delete some of the excess art and document files that were causing the computer to run slowly and the  Adobe programs to crash when I tried to save my work. I have quite a few books on tape in the i-tumes folder which is probably talking up tons of space but I don't where the i-tunes files live.
Thanks for any help. Peggy
Message was edited by: peggy toole