Recovering mboxes in a crashed system

Question

A colleague has this problem. His iMac (purchased Mar 2007, running 10.4) apparently crashed and became unbootable. After some work he has been able to do an erase/install of Leopard and recover all of his files.
A problem remains with his mbox files, where he says: "I can see them in the Apple Mail program but every time I try to import them I get an empty file. A text editor shows they are real enough".
I don't know what format Mail uses (I use Eudora) but from the above I assume he means that opening the file with the text editor, he can see familiar text within.
What are the best steps he could take to recover these mail boxes?
Thanks,

Answer 1

The situation described is similar to the one I'm in. The hard drive in my Intel iMac died a month ago and the local Apple store, after looking at my hard drive with external software, determined it had died and they could not resurrect it. So they gave me two sources for data recovery. One, Gillware in Madison WI, recovered my data, loading it onto a 60 Gig USB drive and then Apple replaced the failed hard drive. Most of the data I can read and restore to my computer, but I've so far been unable to restore my email files. I can import the mail boxes, but they come in as empty folders, their contents remaining on the external hard drive. I dragged a couple of mailboxes from the USB drive to the internal, but Mail doesn't recognize the contents. However, I can double click on the individual emails and they're fully readable.
What gives?
Does anyone have any suggestions for engineering a successful import of the emails and not just the boxes/folders?