Windows XP and Multiple Linux Installations. MBR and first sector of boot partiton.

TI is imaging/validating perfectly. Our problem is restoring a Linux Partition and having it boot.

Windows and Linux are both installed on separate drives; Windows on a 320GB SATA drive ("Windows Drive") and Linux on an 80GB IDE drive ("Linux Drive"). What we would like to do is have multiple instances of trixbox, for testing purposes on the Linux Drive.

trixbox is basically a Linux CentOS 4.5 installation with Asterisk and FreePBX pre-packaged in the install.

When installing trixbox, the install CD guides you through a few steps one of which asks whether you would like to install GRUB and if yes, it gives you the option of the MBR on the Windows Drive or the first sector of the boot partition on the Linux Drive. There is no option for the MBR on the Linux Drive. I assume it is because while every HD has an MBR, there can only be one active MBR per computer and in my case it is the Windows Drive MBR which has DD's OSS. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

I chose the first sector of the boot partition as that was recommended in many threads in this forum as the preferred option if you have a 3rd party boot loader; we have Disk Director Suite 10.0 (DD10) installed, which comes with OSS.

We have taken the following steps:
1. Create a 10GB "/" primary partition on the Linux Drive using Disk Druid.
2. Create a 1.2GB "swap" partition on the Linux Drive.
3. Install trixbox to the "/' partition on the Linux Drive.

After trixbox installation is complete, you can see the Linux OS in DD10's OSS and if you boot to it, you see th GRUB loader with an option to Load Linux or Windows.

Following steps 1-3 above we have taken the following actions:
4. Using TI image/validate the "/" partition on the Linux Drive to the Windows Drive.
5. Using DD10 create a 10GB "/2" primary partition (tried both primary and primary active) on the Linux Drive.
6. Using TI restore the "/" backup on the Windows Drive to the "/2" primary partition (tried both primary and primary active) on the Linux Drive.
7. Reboot into DD10's OSS.

Upon completion of steps 4-7 above, we were unable to see the 2nd install of Linux. There was only one Linux install showing and if we booted into that, we did not see two Linux installs, just that one Linux and Windows.

Continuing from step 4 above, we took a different path and tested as follows:

5. Using DD10 delete the "/" partition on the Linux Drive.
6. Using DD10 create a 10GB "/" primary active partition on the Linux Drive.
7. Using TI restore the "/" backup on the Windows Drive to the "/" primary active partition on the Linux Drive.
7. Reboot into DD10s OSS.

Upon completion of steps 5-7 above, we were unable to see the install of Linux or boot into it.

I read in this forum that the problem may be in that TI does not copy sector-by-sector raw image, rather only existing data which does not get placed in the same location on the target drive and that is why GRUB is unable to pick up where the boot files are, but am somewhat confused at the fact that others have said that they are imaging/restoring Linux just fine.

We also tested the same way using Autopartition instead of Disk Druid which created several partitions as seen in the attached jpg. You will also notice a 3rd HD that is also a 320GB Sata that is used solely for data.

Since the only thing that i know about Linux is that I don't know anything about Linux, I can't really explain how these partitions work. I've been reading up on it for three days now and still don't know how they work. Worth noting however, when I went into TI to try and image the "/" partition that Autopartition created, it was not visible. Only partition I saw was the "/boot" partition and the empty space left on the Linux Drive.

In layman's terms, we'd like to do a fresh install of trixbox then image and restore it to two other partitions (primary or logical, makes no difference to us) and have three working copies on the same Linux Drive that we can move back and forth from using DD10.

Any help is highly appreciated.