How to restore a backup from time machine in 10.6.8

I am running 10.6.8 on my MacPro (early 2008). I have 4 internal hard drives. The main boot drive has 10.6.8 and the secondary drive with a system has Lion. I cannot completely upgrade to Lion on my main drive until all my software is compatible.
My main boot drive started acting like it's in slow motion 2 days ago. No matter what I do (DiskWarrior, Disk Utility, zap PRAM, fix permissions) nothing seems to help. Every mouse click or movement gives me the dreaded spinnin wheel and it hangs for about 5 min and then does what it's supposed to do. I have logged into a new account w/ no special 3rd party apps or utilities and it still does the same thing. Hard drive diagnostics say my hard drive is ok. I have tried reinstalling the 10.6.8 combo update but that hangs after a few minutes of starting. I am stymied.
I thought about restoring a Time Machine backup from 1 day before this happened, but before I attempt a full disk backup, need to ask what to do so as not lose everything.
I assume I must boot up from another disk or hard drive, correct? Can I simply select all the system folders and apps folder or do you think I should do a complete restore?
Thanks.

tlocane wrote:
My main boot drive started acting like it's in slow motion 2 days ago. No matter what I do (DiskWarrior, Disk Utility, zap PRAM, fix permissions) nothing seems to help. Every mouse click or movement gives me the dreaded spinnin wheel and it hangs for about 5 min and then does what it's supposed to do. I have logged into a new account w/ no special 3rd party apps or utilities and it still does the same thing. Hard drive diagnostics say my hard drive is ok. I have tried reinstalling the 10.6.8 combo update but that hangs after a few minutes of starting. I am stymied.
Could be a failing drive, could be Lion when you boot doing something
Disconnect all other drives etc., except the 10.6.8 boot drive, lets flush everything.
hold Shift upon booting, this is Safe mode and fixes things, reboot
then SMC reset, PRAM reset
https://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.6/en/26871.html
Run all of OnyX checks, maintainance and cleaning then reboot at the end
http://www.titanium.free.fr/
If you have AppleJack already installed hold command S at startup of 10.6.8 and Applejack AUTO and press enter.
http://applejack.sourceforge.net/
This mega cocktail will do plenty to rebuild everything and may catch your issue.
If your still having problems I would try to isolate it, if it occurs only if your connected to the Internet, or after the machine has booted Lion etc.
Narrow it down. It might be failing sectors on the drive, this has been known to cause beachballs as the hardware is trying to read from failing sectors, once it gets the information it should be transfering it to a new better sector and mapping off the bad one.
You can expidite this process when you fresh install, by erasing the entire drive (or Free space only) with Zero function in Disk Utility before laying large amounts of data on the drive. (like a OS or partition)
Good Luck

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