i resolved this!
my internal cd/dvd-rom wasn't letting me boot up from my tiger install dvd which has the newer version of disk util on it. once i booted from my external dvd-rw firewire drive with this tiger disk, i was in business.
i was surprised how long it took to complete the restore. over an hour for a >40gb volume seemed long. it restarted just fine and i'm writing you from the newly restarted drive.
thanks for the help.
matt
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