need data recovery advise- mac [View All]

[mopinko]

ok, i have already been flogged. i know, i know. but my hard drive on my mac book crashed, and the apple guys couldn't copy stuff off. no back up. i have a gizmo that i can plug it in as an external drive. so, i have 2 big questions-

first- would it do me any good to put leapard/time machine on the new drive to begin with? would it help at all to put files back where they need to go? (gonna get it anyway.) or is os x gonna be able to find things and put them back? ie- old email, contacts, font book, programs?

second- i have my contacts and tunes on my iphone that i could restore if this fails. i am just afraid that it might decide to sync in the wrong direction, and leave me with nothing. would it do this, or would it know to sync from the place with all the data? it does the push/fetch thing now. i am sort of afraid to turn the computer on. who knows how they talk to each other with all this wireless shit.

thanks in advance and please give this a kick.