Mmmm that's a puzzler. To be honest i haven't tried that scenario. My XP and
Vista installations are on the same hard drive. I suppose the easiest way to
find out is to open Complete PC Backup as if you were going to make a backup
image and check to see if both the XP drive and Vista drive are ticked by
default.
As i sated in my last post Vista adds the bootloader files to the C: drive.
Now this is fine if you installed vista to the C partition, but as you have
XP onboard too you would have had to have installed XP first which would
make your second drive the C: partition (even though when you boot to vista,
vista says it is on the C partition - just a change of drive letters on
vista's behalf). From this perspective if anything went wrong with the XP
partition you would not be able to boot to Vista. So while the XP partition
is working okay you would be able to image the Vista drive and then, if
problems occurred, re-image the vista partition back. But if you lost the XP
drive then you would be unable to launch Vista. So, regardless i think it
will be important to image both the XP drive and the Vista drive, even if
Comple PC Backup doesn't already do it, i would select both.
From what i have seen of Complete PC Backup if you have partitions on the
same hard drive you have the option to select them to be included in the
image or you can simply select the operating system. The only time your data
would be imaged without your input would be if the data resided oin the
operating system drive or partition, but this is pretty well the same with
all imaging software.
Hope this helps
--
John Barnett MVP
Associate Expert
Windows Shell/User
Web:
http://xphelpandsupport.mvps.org
Web:
http://vistasupport.mvps.org
The information in this mail/post is supplied "as is". No warranty of any
kind, either expressed or implied, is made in relation to the accuracy,
reliability or content of this mail/post. The Author shall not be liable for
any direct, indirect, incidental or consequential damages arising out of the
use of, or inability to use, information or opinions expressed in this
mail/post..
"Edwin" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:72A3D13C-931B-4B2E-8F92-(E-Mail Removed)...
> Thank you for you clear and helpful reply. I have two related questions
> remaining.
>
> I have Vista on my first hard drive and XP on my second. Does your
> explanation that it images "your complete hard drive" imply that it images
> only the hard drive that contains Vista or does it image all of my hard
> drives, thus both Vista and XP?
>
> Does a complete PC backup also image each of my data partitions? If so, I
> would lose all of my recent data when I do a restore. Is that true?
>
> Thanks again,
>
> "John Barnett MVP" wrote:
>
>> The Complete PC Backup option does just that, it images (or shadow
>> copies)
>> your complete hard drive. When dual booting it images both XP and Vista,
>> this is by default and cannot be altered. The reason it does this is
>> because
>> XP is usally the C drive anyway and Vista loads files to the C
>> drive/partition for it to be able to boot. Remove these files and Vista
>> will
>> not boot.
>>
>> So in answer to your question No you can't do a partial restore restoring
>> either XP or Vista, you must restore both at the same time.
>>
>> --
>> John Barnett MVP
>> Associate Expert
>> Windows Shell/User
>>
>> Web: http://xphelpandsupport.mvps.org
>> Web: http://vistasupport.mvps.org
>>
>> The information in this mail/post is supplied "as is". No warranty of any
>> kind, either expressed or implied, is made in relation to the accuracy,
>> reliability or content of this mail/post. The Author shall not be liable
>> for
>> any direct, indirect, incidental or consequential damages arising out of
>> the
>> use of, or inability to use, information or opinions expressed in this
>> mail/post..
>>
>> "Edwin" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
>> news:6694F322-7C6E-41BA-804D-(E-Mail Removed)...
>> >I have a multi-boot of XP and Vista on separate partitions and also have
>> > several data partitions.
>> >
>> > If I do a Complete PC Backup, will I be able to restore just my XP or
>> > just
>> > my Vista if I want to leave one of them just the way it is and restore
>> > the
>> > other? Or must everything get overwritten when I restore - both
>> > operating
>> > systems AND my files on my data partition too!!!???
>> >
>> > I would like to use the "Create backup copies of y our files and
>> > folders"
>> > feature to maintain onging incremental copies of my data partitions
>> > and
>> > use
>> > the "Create a Windows Complete PC Backup and Restore Image of your
>> > entire
>> > computer..." option to back up my XP and Vista partitions in such a way
>> > that
>> > I can restore one or the other and NOT have anything happen to the
>> > files
>> > in
>> > my data partitions.
>> >
>> > Do my questions betray a lack of understanding of how Vista Backup and
>> > Restore work? How can I do what I want to do?
>> >
>> > Thanks
>> >
>> >
>>
>>
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