Multi-booting OS....need an expert!

posted on September 15th, 2010, 4:20 am

Ok....so I've setup systems to use multi-booting before.  I'm currently running Win7, XP, OS X, Ubuntu, and Fedora.....I also thought about throwing Win 3.11 on for fun, but I haven't gotten to that yet.    I primarily, used decent guides with some improvisation here and there.  My problem, now, is I have a couple of notebooks with recovery partitions on the OS that can be activated with certain key combinations and/or presses at certain times during boot.  I want to keep those recovery partitions intact and key combinations functional.  And I do not want to mess with anything until I know for certain I can restore it. 

If no one can help instruct me, or direct me to a source, does anyone know if there is anyway to backup the COMPLETE image of your hdd (the OS, software, partition info, and mbr, etc.)?  I know of partition copying software and imaging software, but I want something to capture the entire boot structure and data of the hdd.....that is, if no one can help me. 

Thanks in advanced guys!!!

posted on September 15th, 2010, 4:50 am

I think its called disc imaging but i never saw the reason you use the recovery software so i dont know.

posted on September 15th, 2010, 7:51 am

There are tools out there capable of doing both.  Some of the tools that enable you to backup your MBR for example can be a little bit esoteric and tricky to understand how to use.

The easier way, and always a nice idea, is as you said, take an image of the whole disk.  Many many moons ago I would have used Ghost, but that i think got bought up by Norton and anything associated with Norton needs to be avoided like the plague.

There are a number of commercial applications, but why pay money if there is a freeware version.  I found this page which may be useful for you.

Free Hard Disk Backup and Restore, Hard Disk Image and Cloning Utilities (thefreecountry.com)

posted on September 15th, 2010, 11:07 am

if u are doing multi boots and stuff then why do u need a recovery partition? you obviously have the knowledge to reinstall your os from a disc. so u dont need the recovery data. i mean new versions of windows can repair themselves from the disc in a similar way to non destructive os reinstalls. and of course u can backup and wipe, like i do periodically.

recovery partitions are more trouble than they are worth sometimes. i repaired a laptop yesterday with a corrupted recovery partition, it was a vista oem build, so i got rid of the recovery partition and installed windows 7 recovering loads of space.

also if u wanna play around with old systems just use virtual machines, that way u dont need to mess around with multi boot. cos there's no way you can use windows 3 regularly lol.

posted on September 16th, 2010, 3:09 am

Thanks loki.  Truth be told, Myles, is that two of them are work computers and, while they let us keep them sometimes (after a year or two), in case they don't, I want to be able to restore it to 100% factory working order, which is more than just having the right OS installed.  I'll have to try that program out tomorrow and let you all know how it goes.  Thank you all for your help!  .....you will all still be assimilated though!!  If I can ever find the time to get on and play a game again.