win 7 backing up xp drive?

[valc]

Hi--I am not a computer newbie, but I am new to win 7. I searched the forums and tutorials first, I may have missed a simple answer to this question, and if you have answered this before please just point me to the answer.

I have xp installed on my C drive, and recently installed win 7 ultimate 32 bit on a clean F drive. Both systems work flawlessly.

I use a 1 tb (drive letter H) drive for my backups.

Today I tried the win 7 backup utility, selected H as my backup location, with disk image etc included. Backup ran for about 10-15 minutes and, being curious, I clicked on the "view details" (i think that is what it is called) and saw that the backup was backing up my C drive. I stopped the backup, and deleted the files win 7 had created on my H drive.

I just assumed that win 7 would backup itself, and that that is why there is no "source" choice option, only a "destination" option. Of course, if win 7 is ACTUALLY backing up itself from the F drive, but defaults to calling itself C, then that would still work. Don't know.

Thinking about letting the backup complete and then going into it on H to see what is there, xp from C or win 7 from F, but hope to hear from someone who already has the answer.

So glad I found this forum, I am sure to learn a lot here. Thanks in advance.

 

[dmillergv]

If you boot from Win 7, that drive becomes "C" for that boot cycle.

 

[DocBrown]

I did an image backup of an 80gb laptop drive with 2 partitions (xp &7). It make one image that had both I had named each partition "xp_25gb" & "Win7_45gb" . I saw it use both names while doing the image to the 1tb ext HD. I then restored it to a new 250gb HD in the laptop. It restored both the XP & Win7 partitions. So the laptop can still dual boot on the new HD

 

[valc]

ahhh---so it is backing up win 7 on H. thanks so much for the astonishingly quick reply.

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

Hello valc, welcome to Seven forums!





It is probably because the XP install it "System, Active", where the boot files are stored for both XP and Windows 7 and they both have to be backed-up for that reason.


Will you please post a snip/screen-shot of the entire disk management drive map so we can see what you have going on.

In the Windows start menu right click computer and click manage, in the left pane of the "Computer Management" window that opens click disk management and post a snip of that.

How to Post a Screenshot in Seven Forums

 

[valc]

ok here is a snip taken from the win 7 drive.

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

OK


Disk 0 is C: ... XP

Disk 1 F: is ... W_7


You can see the "System, Active" partition, that's where the boot files for the dual boot are stored, I can see you are in Windows 7 (the "Boot" designation), how did it get labeled as F:?

 

[valc]

I had this drive in before I installed win 7 on it as a backup drive for the C=xp drive. Then added the H drive and moved everything from F to H. Then installed win 7 on H.

 

[valc]

oops--i meant to say installed win 7 on F. sorry

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

If you choose, the best way to solve the issue is to do-away the Windows managed dual boot and use the BIOS to choose which OS you want to boot when the PC is first started.

It's fairly simple process, first, disconnect the Hard Disk Drive (HDD) that has Windows XP installed to it and leave only the Windows 7 HDD connected, then you mark the Windows 7 partition as "Active" then do 3 separate startup repairs with a system restart between each repair to create a set of boot files just for Windows 7 so that it will be able to boot independently of XP.

When finished and Windows 7 is booting on its own then reconnect the XP HDD and that's it, they will now boot independently of each other using the BIOS boot menu.

It's not as big a deal as it sounds, have a look at the tutorial at the link below for all the details.

Startup Repair - Run 3 Separate Times

 

[valc]

OK I can do this. Not too intimidating, but do I need to? I still run XP a lot. Will my win 7 backups be functional if I leave things as they are? I mean, will I have a valid usable image/backup of win 7 on H?

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

I don't have much experience with the backup side of things so you will have to wait for another to answer that one for you.

 

[valc]

Thanks for your advice. I may end up doing the three repairs if an answer to my last question is not forthcoming. Thanks again.

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

Either way you have to choose which OS you want to start when the PC is booted, it doesn't make it any more difficult to choose, all BIOS's have a one-time hot key boot preference menu, like mine is F8 at power-on, it doesn't actually enter the BIOS proper.


If you do it, mark W_7 as active before you shut down Windows put the Windows install/repair disk in the ODD so that when you hit power it's already in the drive and select to boot the disk.

Then power down the PC and disconnect the XP HDD and power-up to do the startup repairs.


It just makes it better/easier to sort if one or the other HDDs go down.