OpenSUSE Install :: Backup / Restore And GRUB 11.3 X86-64?

I do regular full and incremental backups using dar. All disk volumes are labeled and mounted by label. There is no other operating system installed. I built a new system but due to having to RMA a disk, I built the openSUSE system on a disk from the backup cycle. This Maxstor disk has problems which is why it was moved into an external box and the backup system. I now have a replacement disk and wish to replace the Maxstor before it dies. I initially tried a disk to disk clone with clonezilla but this died complaining that a small target partition was smaller than the source partition. It had created the partition and the start and end sectors were identical. There are no problems with the new disk.

I decided that it would be a good opportunity to test a full system disk restore from the backups. I have in the past restored individual files and partitions but have never restored onto a bare boot disk. I have restored and labeled all 6 partitions. The partition containing / has been marked as active. /boot is included in the partition containing /. fstab is valid, menu.lst is valid, device.map needs editing but this is not a problem.

What do I need to do to make this disk bootable. I have looked through the GRUB documentation but if you try some standard GRUB commands in 11.3 you get messages saying don't do this use YAST. I have seen other suggestions ranging from trying to start the not supported system repair option to using dd to copy the MBR which seemed to trash the partitions in the users extended partition.

The YAST bootloader displays "boot from the root partition". I assume that this is currently what is happening rather than what YAST thinks might be a good idea for next time. I suspect that all I have to do is dd the first 512 bytes of the root partition. If this is the case I can add this to the backup process. While I automate backups I do not automate restores. Each restore tends to be different and I am not sure of the best way getting grub to work on a bare disk restore.