Copying System Partition

I've just installed Paragon Partition Mananger Pro 10 for the first time on my computer. I want to swap hard drives and make the system multi-book. As a first step I want to copy the current system partition over another drive for back-up purposes. When reading the doumentation I see many setting options and I am a bit confused.

What is the best/safest way to copy the partition on my current hard drive containing VISTA over to another drive for back-up purposes?

What is the best/safest way to copy it back as a second partition on a new drive so that I can multi-boot between the o/s that I intend to first install on my new drive and the old VISTA partition above?

Thanks.

 

First, you should do a backup of the current Vista OS partition to a safe location(external drive, another drive or partition). This will make a complete archived image of the partition that you can restore later.

Then, since your installing a new OS, install the new drive, set up the OS however you like, and reinstall Paragon Partition Manager. Be sure to create a new partition for the original Vista OS you are going to dual boot to. This can be done when you install the OS, or later using Partition Manager, or one of our recovery CD's.

Next, restore the archive of the original Vista installation to the new partition you have created for it on the new disk.

Lastly you will need to add the original Vista installation into the BCD of the new OS which can be done with EasyBCd

http://neosmart.net/dl.php?id=1

Note:If the new OS is XP, it is highly recommended that you restore the Vista installation BEFORE installing XP, because you will not be able to add the vista installation (or windows 7 for that matter) to the XP boot.ini. If this is the case, after installing the new HDD, boot to our recovery CD, restore the Vista backup, create a new partition for XP, then install XP on the new partition and add it to the BCD using EasyBCD.