True Image and Dual Booting

Currently have Windows XP Pro installed and use ATI 8. I am planning on Dual Booting with Vista early next year and upgrading to ATI 10.

Would there be any problems when i restored one of the partitions for any reason? I read in another forum that after setting up an XP / Vista dual boot system and then restoring the XP partition it stopped showing the Dual Boot menu on start up - something about the "bcd store, which is loaded to the XP partition/drive". (Personally i suspect they restored the XP partition to before they set up the Dual Boot so it removed the option.)

 

I haven't tried dual-booting Vista, but I've had no problems with restoring partitions in a dual-WinXP and a dual-WinXP/Linux system. If your dual-boot settings are stored on a partition you restore to a non-dual-boot state, then you'll probably be back to a single-boot configuration. If you use a 3rd party program for booting, most of them can fix problems like this by detecting the missing OS and placing it back in the boot list.

I would recommend making a complete disk image before (your non-dual-boot system) and after you have your partitions setup the way you want and all OS's installed. That way you have a good single/dual-boot base to fall back on if needed.

 

MudCrab - cheers.

Is it possible to Image two or more partitions (i.e the XP one and the Vista one) in the same Image? So once the dual boot was working fine you could have your own "System Recovery" image that would restore BOTH OS?

 

You can Image the separate partitions or any selected partitions, including the entire drive. It is ideal to get the system partitioned, dual-boots setup, etc. then do an image of the entire disk to get a good base to fall back on. After that you can just backup the individual partitions as needed or the entire disk again, whatever you like.

Setting up a multi-boot system can take a while to get just how you want, so it's definately good to make a backup image once you get finished. Depending on how you go about setting it up, you may want to install XP first then image the drive. Then install Vista, get dual-booting working and then image again with the entire drive. That way if Vista (or other 2nd OS) doesn't install correctly or screws up the system you can just restore the first OS image and try again.

 

MudCrab - Excellent.

Finally if i use two separate hard drive drives (one for each OS) can i image the two drives in one Image or do i have to do them separately?

 

I have not actually imaged two hard disks in one image file, but you can. You just have to select the disk(s) and partition(s) you want when you do the backup. When you restore you'll have to select to either restore the disk(s) or the partition(s).

One thing you may want to consider is the image size of doing this and how frequently you'll backup. If one OS gets used more you may back it up more often, in which case including the other OS disk/partition will waste space and time. Of course, only you know how much space you'll be using.