Account access lost after backup and restore
 

Something maybe related was reported by slickmrick a while ago:

MacBookPro, Superduper, OSX 10.4.8:

* SD backup/erase of all files onto external Firewire Drive
* Upgrade MBP 80GB internal drive to 160GB
* Installation of System 10.4.5 on internal drive using System CDs (cause previously I managed to corrupt my Character Palette using monolingual, so I wanted a proper system back)
* In the installation process you are invited to restore data from an "old mac" which I did by using the external drive as "old mac"
* Now I had most of my files back on System 10.4.5. I noticed, however, that many files were missing in some of the unix folders like /usr, /usr/bin, /usr/lib aso. Hence
* I booted from the external drive and applied SD "smart restore of all files which are newer or different". Many files were restored onto the internal drive
* After reboot, 3/6 user accounts were missing from the login window
* More badly, I had no access any more in System Preferences,Accounts on any account including my own
* I could only survive by re-installation from scratch, OSX-update by internet and restauration of missing files by hand

Did I miss something or is there a problem for SD to restore the privileges in files relevant for user accounts ?

You can't mix a restore and a bootable system like that, falk -- various files were likely copied that shouldn't be there, and others that should: you ended up with a weird mix of systems...

Dave,
Would this be essentially the same starting conditions one would find after having a failed drive replaced with a newly-installed and initialized (fresh OS install) hard drive from via AppleCare? I wasn't thinking too quickly, and let it guide me through an initial user setup, so it created an account with id 501 which already existed in the backup. Also, like falk, none of the other accounts show up as users though the folders are still there.
I have a sparse image backup to restore from (obviously from the trial version), and would like to restore as much of the system as possible. Should I do a delete & install of the OS, and then perform a restore prior to creation of user accounts?
Two months of evaluation that include an HD failure are pretty convincing for sales, let me tell you :) Looking forward to the restore so I can register my copy and take advantage of the faster and more flexible backup capabilities.

If you get a fresh drive from AppleCare, you can either do a full restore from your backup, or you can use the Migration Assistant to migrate to the "clean" OS (reinstalled) from the backup...

Since you have a sparse image, though, the best thing to do would be to follow the "full restore" instructions in the User's Guide ("Recovering from a disaster").

Thanks, I expected that to be the case, and am 1/3 of the way through doing the full restore. Also good to have the tip about using Migration Assistant for future reference.

-Jim