Possible to image just the OS and not the entire HD?

What I mean is.. I want to be able to make snapshot images of my system, just in case some catastrophe happens, and be able to restore the image to any HD.

When I created the image of my HD, I included both partitions. The image was taken from a 17GB drive, but restored to an, already formatted, 200GB drive. So, basically, when I restored the partitions, I wound up with 158GB of unallocated space. I had a hell of a time getting partition magic to fix it. At first, it would not let me resize the D:\ partition, which was one of the restored partitions or create a new partiton of the unallocated space. I had to open a DOS box, unmount the drive, run chkdsk, etc. I was finally able to get it all partitioned the way I wanted. I guess I was just surprised that it took so long, and was so work intensive. I had never imaged/restored a drive before, but thought it was a much simpler process than what it turned out to be.

Is there a way to avoid this? Should I have created seperate images of each individual partition? In this case, would it just restore the image, and not worry about formatting or deleting partitions?

Assuming there is enough space to accomdate the image being restored, I want to be able to just drop the restored image to a new partition, and not worry about there being unallocated leftover space to fix and format. Is this possible at all or am I just dreaming?

Sorry for the long, rambling post

 

Hello zippi,

Yes, you can image and restore individual partitions. However, by doing so, the Master Boot Record (MBR) will not be copied into the image. Normally this isn't a problem if restoring back to the same HD containing its good MBR. If, however, the MBR gets trashed by some wayward software/virus or the drive physically fails and needs to be changed, then you would need to carry out a "fixmbr" after the restore in order for the drive to boot correctly.

Regards