As usual for me, I am a day (actually a few months...) late and a dollar short. I don't know if this will help you with the issue you posted here but, I am sure it will help you in the future regarding cloning mac drives.

[link|http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html|http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html]
[link|http://www.bombich.com/|http://www.bombich.com/]

The site has some tools wich take the sheer terror out of distributing Macs in a production environment.

Carbon Copy Cloner can also be used similar to Nortons Ghost to create a "snapshot" of your system as you like it then, should the kids *ahem* throw out something important you can recover it in a fashion similar to looking in a zip file or, restore the box with your "blessed" image.

Hope these tools help in the future.....