Help with Time Machine - Restore on Leopard/Tiger?

[Elphaba]

Hi. I have a Macbook, and used Leopard with a Time Machine to backup on an external HD.

The internal HD started to fail, so I bought a brand-new internal HD to replace it. I want to restore my machine with the Time Machine backup I have but I have a problem. I lost my Leopard install disk -- I only have my original Tiger install disk that came with my computer.

I will partition the new internal HD using the Tiger disk.. So I ask: Will I be able to back-up my files into my new Tiger-OS HD if the back-up was done with Leopard? Can I load my backup files if they were done with a different version of OS?

Please help!

 

[simsaladimbamba]

You can't do a Time Machine restore but you can use Finder to browse the Time Machine backup on that external HDD and collect the files you need.
You could also get Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard for 29 USD and use that to restore from your Time Machine backup.

 

[Elphaba]

Thank you for the quick reply!

I think I might go with the Snow Leopard option. But - how would I go about installing that? Do I partition the new hard drive with the Snow Leopard disk? Or do I install Tiger first and then upgrade to Snow Leopard?

Sorry for the newb questions.

 

[simsaladimbamba]

Thank you for the quick reply!

I think I might go with the Snow Leopard option. But - how would I go about installing that? Do I partition the new hard drive with the Snow Leopard disk? Or do I install Tiger first and then upgrade to Snow Leopard?

Sorry for the newb questions.

The Snow Leopard Upgrade DVD is a fully working retail DVD and does not need a prior installation of Mac OS X to work.
Just boot from the SL DVD, format your new HDD correctly (http://macs.about.com/od/applications/ss/diskutilformat.htm) and install Mac OS X.

Another guide: http://guides.macrumors.com/Clean_Install_of_OS_X_10.6_Snow_Leopard

 

[Elphaba]

thanks again!