Importing Home Folder after new hard drive and Lion Update

If you loaded SL, then try migrating your user stuff before embarking on installing Lion. BTW, if you failed to use the same username/password as you had on Tiger, you're stuck with two incompatible accounts. As for the 3rd-party apps, you'll have to reinstall, and for the basic Apple apps, you'll have SL-compatible ones. ILife requires reinstallation.

If the username and password combo is identical, then you'll need to unhide the new hidden user's Library folder, then open both home folders and transfer you're stuff. Do note that you might get you can't do that messages. For those items, move the new ones into a newly created Desktop folder, and then you should be able to copy the Tiger ones. Once done, restart so the copied stuff is put into RAM and is available for your other steps, such as reinstalling the apps.

Reinstalling all the apps and resetting all your preference settings will prove to more complicated. If you had maintained current bootable backups/clones on a separate HD, you wouldn't be in this position. I lost my internal HD (fatal, with no way to access it), had it replaced, and within six hours, restored the nine partitions, and didn't miss a beat, since I could run on the clones. Good luck with your endeavor.

You're right. I got a bit ahead of myself. With Snow Leopard, ignore that, and proceed as I indicated afterwards. Once you've transferred your home folder stuff and reinstalled your apps, make a bootable backup/clone to an ext FWHD, ensure that it works as expected, and then you'll be ready to install Lion.

No. It matters not which OS is installed before bringing in the saved data.

No, it doesn't have to be FW; however, I never recommend USB since those are slow and designed to control peripherals, not data transfer.

Because it's simpler to install SL than Lion. No Internet connection required.