Windows Backup to Drive with Data already on it???

"Can I run Windows Backup and create an image on the old drive even though there are 70GB's of apps & files on there already?? Does the backup wizard partiton or format the selected drive in the process of backing up? Obviously I'd like to keep accessing that stuff if I can."

YES you can run backup and create an image--does the backup wizard create a partition? NO but you can do that with disk management from within win7 (or you can just simply create the disk image and store it on that drive without partitioning-win7 will create a folder called 'WindowsImageBackup')--most people would probably create a partition-there are several free and easy to use partitioning apps available (EASEUS Partition Manager is one):

Free Partition Magic alternative. Best Free Partition Manager Freeware for Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7/8 32 bit & 64 bit - EaseUS Partition Master Home Edition.

all your files will still be intact on the old drive (assuming you partition it correctly)--but--you won't be able to run any of the apps unless you've set up your machine as a 'dual-boot' system-and there 'may' be driver issues when you try to setup XP to dual boot on a NEW win7 machine

Thanks very much for the informative response. It sounds like the easiest method would be to simply allow Backup to create an image folder on the old drive.

I seem to be having no issues (yet) running apps on the old drive...although I'm not sure how that works. Is XP "running" on that drive even though the computer boots in Windows 7?? I didn't think that was possible...I planned on just reformatting the old drive but tried to open Photoshop for fun & it worked.

Somebody had this situation on another site and was told it really shouldn't work at all...[Solved] Move old hdd to new comp, stil use old programs? - Hard-Disks - Storage

But...2 different image apps on the old drive - Photoshop & MGI Photosuite - can open files from the new drive, modify them, and save them back to the new drive. So how in the world is this working for me??

in theory, it shouldn't work--but since it does--be happy

am out