@Gavilan
You said you copied the data from the 450MB hard drive to the 20GB one, THEN tried to install OS3.9. That suggests to me that you created the partitions on the disk under 3.1? If so then I think you need to boot with the Emergency Disk, reinstall a new RDB on the disk, install SFS, create the partitions, install OS3.9, THEN copy your data.
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moto