Mac volume containing database wont boot

[Brandon Raper]

Mac hard drive crashed and cant boot to that volume
(which has my database on it) and I am looking to
find a solution to saving the data in the tables.
I can boot to an external drive and seemingly get to
most things on the crashed drive.

If I make a backup of the SQL data files (where are they?)
is it a simple matter of just putting them in the proper
directory after I re-build the volume and re-installed
(presumably the same version of) MySQL.

Another problem being - how can I be sure which version
I have installed?

Any guidance would be appreciated.