Need to restore TM backup to 2nd HD w/o install disks (1 mac)

Question

hi all,
i've run into a quandry. my powermac g5 primary drive (OSX10-5) is throwing i/o errors. i have a recent TM backup, and would like to restore it to my secondary drive (MacOS), and reboot from that drive. then i can work on the primary drive. the panther install on MacOS no longer boots, so i want get 10.5 on that drive.
my dvr-116d cannot read my leopard install disk (nor any other disk). i have a WD mybook -- it's my TM drive. (how about that for irony?) i followed the thread on the WD and DVR mis-interaction, but none of the suggested fixes have worked (no WD plist file to delete, have updated drivers and firmware, rebooted without drive, etc). thus, i can't restart from the leopard install disk. my other systems are all snow leopard, which won't run on the g5, so that rules out the 2nd mac method.
i have made few attempts without success. first, using disk utility (DU), i tried to create an image from the TM OSX10-5 backup. it hung after 30 hours of "creating disk image..." second, i tried using TM restore to different target to put the files on MacOS, and ended up with /Volumes/MacOS/OSX10-5. using DU again, i turned that into a disk image, reformatted MacOS, and restored from that disk image. the result won't boot properly (system tries to booth, then powers off in about 15 seconds). on reflection, the FAQ did say "to restore a data-only volume to an alternate location", so i shouldn't have expected it to work. i'm currently looking into migration assistant...
the primary disk is on borrowed time, so i'd be grateful for any/all ideas/help. (too bad i can't just dd the backup onto a reformatted volume like the old days.)
many thanks,
bert

Answer 1

Another alternative for booting the Leopard install disc would be to "borrow" the DVD drive from one of your newer computers via FireWire Target Disk mode. You would need an appropriate Firewire cable that could connect the two computers.
In this situation you can't set up FireWire Target Disk mode with the Intel as the host computer, but you should still be able to use TDM "the other way", using the computer with the functioning DVD drive as the TDM target and and running the Leopard DVD from the G5 as host. The newer Intel Mac is used only for its DVD drive, and is otherwise totally passive.
To try this, you could do the following:
Shut down the G5. Insert the Leopard DVD into the other computer, and restart the other computer while holding down the T key, booting the other computer into FireWire Target Disk Mode . Connect it to the G5 with the FW cable, and then start the G5 while holding down the Option key. This should boot the G5 into the startup manager, and hopefully you will see the Leopard OS X install DVD as one of the startup choices. Select that, and try to boot from it.
Message was edited by: jsd2