MBP: Install SL to external, backup, restore to internal?

[Breeze]

I'm still running Leopard 10.5.8 on my Macbook Pro because the last time I tried a straight upgrade of my system to SL it was a disaster as about a third of my work-related apps had problems with it. I recovered my system via TM (which was really slow, but worked) because my SD image is on a network share. So this is what I'd like to do now:

1. Install Snow Leopard fresh on an bootable external HD.
2. Over a few days or weeks, install all my additional software there.
3. Once I'm satisfied that everything is working ok, then make a backup of this SL install on another bootable external HD.
4. Erase the MBP internal HD and restore the external image to the internal drive.

So: can I do this with SuperDuper ? If not, what should I use?

If yes: what are the best settings and procedures to use for this to work?

Thanks!

[dnanian]

Sure, you can do that. Nothing terribly complex - everything you're trying to do there is covered in the User's Guide. Not quite sure why you're making the copy to use it as a source for the copy, though.

[Breeze]

Sure, you can do that. Nothing terribly complex - everything you're trying to do there is covered in the User's Guide. Not quite sure why you're making the copy to use it as a source for the copy, though.
Thanks. So you're saying I can use SD to take the SL installation off its external drive and just copy it to the internal? I thought SD needed a sparse image to restore the internal drive from. Clearly there's something I don't understand about what "sparse image" really means. :confused:

[dnanian]

No, in fact it's much easier to copy directly from and to a drive than to copy to a 'sparse image'. You shouldn't be using an image at all if you don't have to.