If you've booted off of a 10.4.6 (ca. June 2006) Apple install DVD and tried to use the "Restore" tab to clone a disk using Apple Software Restore, you may have noticed that the drag and drop functionality is missing. That is, if you try to drag a disk or Volume to either the source or destination fields, nothing happens.

Personally, I wonder whether this is a bug or by design. Now that Macs use Intel processors, there may be more complicated copyright issues at stake when cloning entire hard drives, which could include DRM information.

In any case, Apple hasn't made an official statement on the subject, and until they do, here's a way to use the 'asr' command to achieve the same effect. When you're booted off the DVD, launch the Terminal application instead of Disk Utility, then use the command below, substituting your hard drive names where appropriate. Note: this will erase all data on your destination volume! Backup first if necessary!!

asr restore --verbose --source /Volumes/MyOldHardDrive --target /Volumes/MyNewHardDrive

This is a great way to completely copy all data from one drive to another, such as when you've purchased a new machine, and want every byte of data copied over to the new one. Apple's Setup Assistant makes life a whole lot easier in this regard, but in many cases it can lead to improperly or partially installed Apps, and can miss lots of stuff (like fink). If you use the asr command line tool as above, everything will work as it should when you're done.