Is It Possible To Use Image To Go From XP To Vista And Back?

Hello All,

Currently have XP installed on the aspire one with various documents and video on this. I would like to try Vista (without dual booting) as a full clean install.

Is it possible to create image file / boot image of my current XP system and restore from this after installing Vista (ie go from XP to Vista and back to XP)? I am hopeful that I wouldn't want / need to go back to XP but would like the ability to do so before trying Vista.

I'll be using either Norton Ghost or Acronis True Image if that makes a difference.

As always, any help much appreciated.

Cheers
B

 

Hi there.

I do it all the time. I use an 8gigs flash drive and 2 programs to do it.

For Win32 partitions (xp, vista,etc) I use ghost 2003. I just format the flash drive as bootable with the HP usb format utility and drop the ghost.exe executable in there and then boot from the flash drive. After that I just tell ghost to drop the image files on the flash drive. Obviously you'll need a flashdrive as large as your hard drive (a bit smaller if you use compression, but still).There are many tutorials on the net explaining how to use the HP utility to make your flash drive bootable. Just google it.

For Linux and OSX partitions I use AA1backup ( http://macles.blogspot.com/2008/12/acer ... ackup.html ). This little (free) jewel of an app clones and restores *any* disk (ie. Win32,linux,OSX and whatnot) on your AA1 as long as it's the first one. It is based on "unetbootin" and uses a modified version of "Slax" to do it's magic. It's so simple,a monkey could do it. Install the thing on the flashdrive, boot from it,select "Backup" or "restore" depending on your needs and voilà.That's it. It grabs the MBR, the partitions, *everything* on your first disk. The whole process takes about 20 minutes for my 8gigs SDHC drive.

I could only use AA1backup for everything but I find that ghost creates smaller images of my win32 disk. Also, I've been using it for years so I'm quite comfortable with it but it doesn't seem to like non-win32 partitions that much.

Frankly, I would suggest everyone just use AA1backup. It's free, it works great and someone using ghost without knowing what they're doing could create a total mess. Ghost is not the most user-friendly app around, i'll tell you that much.

Hope that helps.


Edit: When you're done backing up with AA1backup, just plug the flashdrive in another computer and copy the whole "backup" folder somewhere safe if you want to keep this particular image. Then do the opposite when you want to restore. Grab the whole "backup" folder and copy it back on the flashdrive (after having installed AA1backup, of course).

 

Thanks Neopath for such a comprehensive reply. I'll go down the AA1 Backup route.