Migrating from a Leopard HDD to Lion

Well, it happened. My '08 MacBook Pro just couldn't stay alive long enough for the next refresh of the model line and whimpered out in the saddest way: was using it at work, put it to sleep and took it home and when I wanted to check my mail, it never woke up again. AASP sez the logic board is fried and the cost of the part exceeds market value of the thing and also represents a sizable portion of the cost of a new one. So, a minute of silence for the Mac that has gone to joint its creator. And I'll be forced to upgrade the hardware before I expected; like it or not, Lion here I come.
Only valuable remains is the undamaged 200GB HDD securely mounted on an external FW800 enclosure and containing, well, my digital life. The question is: can you successfully carry out a migration into Lion from an external HDD via FW or USB?
Before it died, it had the latest patched version of 10.5.8 and the HDD has Apple firmware on it. Would like to be able to recover all my Thunderbird mail, my iTunes library, my iPhoto collection and the rest of the regular files.
Info, insights, gotchas to beware (and condolences) will be much appreciated.

I Think that you could try this: Install Lion on your new computer. Then the normal way, I think, is to use Migration Assistant but this involves hooking the two machines together, and you say that your old machine's logic board is fried. (Unless you have it repaired.) So I don't think that would work. So, when your new machine is up and running on Lion, connect your Firewire drive to it and see what is on it that you could copy over.
iPhoto's library of photos in Lion is in System Hard Drive > Users > Username >  Pictures. You say that your iPhoto collection is on the Firewire drive, so look for it there and copy across to the Pictures folder in Lion. I did that successfully when I got my new Mac.
I don't use iTunes, but my iTunes library is called (on Lion) "iTunes Library xyz" (where "xyz" is a date sequence". So search for that title (without the "xyz) and copy it across as above. However, others could advise where it should be copied to in Lion.) The same applies to other files, but I can't help with Thunderbird.
Another way would be to take out your internal Hard Drive (if that can be done on a MacBook Pro) and put it into a external HD enclosure suitable for that size and type of drive. These are boxes with sockets and leads to enclose a bare drive and make it connectable to a computer. They are quite cheap.I did that successfully with my G5's internal, and I still use it as a backup. It is USB, and gets its power through the USB lead.
Hope this helps. Good luck.

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