Newbie doing first restore

[henrydadd]

Dead hard drive on son's macbook. Can boot up from external drive and most works okay (a permission issue getting into vista via VMware Fusion).

Now how do I put the external drive back on the internal drive? I want it all to move as a piece so that next time I open up, we're right back good as new on the laptop.

The directions are thin; i just can't figure what I'm supposed to do now.

Oh yes, the retail store wouldn't give me back the original harddrive itself so if we can't get this of the external drive he's screwed - a full year of schoolwork gone. I need this to work without risking the backup on the ext drive.

Help! Thanks!
Henry

[dnanian]

If you've replaced the drive, you'll just "Backup - all files" back to the internal, using Smart Update or Erase, then copy.

Or, if they've installed a fresh OS, you can start up from the new drive and then -- when prompted to "copy from another Mac", point it at the backup and it'll bring in your files and applications.