Using partimage (not the CD installer), I restored all the images to their respective partitions. I also made a swap partition on hda3. On first boot, it complained about not finding hda7, which I then created. After rebooting again, it told me my /var partition (hda7) was corrupted, and it restored it for me. Seems like /var contains the actual megatouch binary "start". As far as I can tell, all the files are there.
I'm not sure what you mean about an extra layer. Honestly, I think there is a demand for these drives because nobody knows how to correctly partition one. I wish I had a working machine so I could test my theory.