User accounts gone after Restoring disk

Question

Hello -
I am running OS 10.4.11 on a PowerMac G4 Dual 450MHz Desktop. Recently I purchased a new IDE Hard Drive to put into my computer. I wanted to make an exact copy of my old hard drive onto the new hard drive and use the new hard drive as my main startup volume. I used the Restore tab in Disk Utility to create the copy.
What happened is that none of the user account data was copied over. Even more strange is that now I cannot find any of my user account data on the original hard drive!
I used the application "Whatsize" to figure out where all the data is allocated to on the original hard drive. It only accounted for about 25GB of the 30GB of data that are being used on the hard drive. I'm guessing the remaining 5GB of data is what was in my user account, but it can't find it for some reason.
Anyhow, I guess my question is, how do I recover the data from my user account that I can't seem to find?
Also, steps I've taken so far:
- I ran Disk Utility (from another computer using the disk in Target disk mode) to see if I could repair permissions or repair the disk. Neither Repair Permissions nor Verify Permissions were enabled for me to check - only Verify and Repair Disk. I clicked Verify Disk and got a message saying that it had failed and said that "The underlying task reported failure on exit". I then tried to Repair Disk, but got the same error. Disk cannot be verified or repaired.
- I've also tried DiskWarrior on it, but it doesn't seem to do anything.
Thanks,
Steve Pederson

Answer 1

Hi Steve,
I found the following in the Apple Help Viewer. Read thoroughly first to see if this might help you:
Restoring a deleted user account
If a user's account was deleted and the contents of the user's home folder were saved, you can restore that user's account and the contents of their home folder. Saved items in the deleted home folder are stored in a disk image file (the filename ends in .dmg) in the Deleted Users folder in the Users folder on the startup disk.
1. To open the user's deleted files, double-click the disk image in the Deleted Users folder in the Users folder on the startup disk. The disk image content appears in a new window.
2. Note: If there is no disk image for the user's deleted account, no files were saved when the account was deleted. You will need to create a new account for the user.
3. To restore the deleted user's home folder, open the Users folder on the startup disk and choose File > New Folder.
4. Type a name for the folder and then press Return.
5. To copy the contents of the disk image to the new user account, in the disk image file, choose Edit > Select All and then drag the contents to the user folder you created. 
6. To re-create the deleted user account, choose Apple menu > System Preferences and click Accounts. If some settings are dimmed, click the lock icon and type an administrator name and password.
7. Click Add + and then type the user name. If you don't want to use the automatically generated short name, type a new short name. (After the account is created, you won't be able to change the short name.)
8. Type the user's password in the Password and Verify boxes. You may type a hint to help the user remember the password.
9. Click Create Account.
10. In the dialog that appears, click OK restore the user's account. The user's home folder will contain all their saved files.
Carolyn
Message was edited by: Carolyn Samit