[dnanian]

I don't understand: a Sandbox is not a backup at all... but if you follow the steps in the User's Guide to copy the Sandbox to the main drive its content is shared from, and follow those steps exactly, AND make a backup of that main drive first just-in-case-you-make-a-mistake, it will leave the shared items alone and copy the unshared items (everything but /Users, basically).

It's absolutely critical that you follow the steps in the User's Guide.

Normally, though, you'd 'restore' an OS by doing an archive-and-install with your OSX DVD.