[robwilkerson]

A few days after Xmas, the hard drive on my almost new 17" unibody MBP failed. Catastrophically. The local Apple store has replaced the drive with a shiny new one, but now I need to restore my system rather than rebuilding.

I have a backup from Christmas day, but after lots of Googling and reading the SD user guide, I don't feel like I have a clear picture of how the restore should work. At the very least, the steps I'm trying to follow aren't working.

I have an external HD that currently contains 2 separate SD backups in sparesebundle format. I sort of assumed (yeah, I know what that means) that I'd be able to press <option> when booting and boot to either backup, but a practice run that I just tried indicates that this may not be the case. I read the FAQ, but my machine is an Intel Mac.

I also tried following the instructions for non-bootable devices, but while I can boot into the install disc, Disk Utility won't allow me to open my sparsebundle file in order to restore from it.

Are there other steps I should be taking? Am I just doing something horribly wrong?

Thanks.