I would like to know how to make a image of my HD, save it on a partition, and be able to boot off it instead on my windows disk. Thank you.
You can do it, but you would have to hide the partition of the original windows drive. If you try to boot up the computer with 2 system drives you will have problems. You can "save" a copy of the compressed image on another partition, but if you want to make the other partition bootable you need to "restore" the image on the partition instead. Are you using windows xp or windows vista? both of them have particular ways of backing up and restoring. The easiest and least expensive image software I've found is easyimage (they have a good 15 day demo), it's a barebones software that works with either vista or xp. But backing up and restoring windows doesn't work everytime as advertised no matter what software you use. Sometimes the restored hard drive/partition won't bootup on the first try. For windows xp, you might need to have a "boot corrector" to fix a non-booting restored drive (latest version of boot corrector is in paragon partition manager version 9), for vista you will need the vista installation dvd to perform a "repair" on the boot sector. Not always required but I've encountered problems on half of my restorations but with the above programs I can fix them in less than 5 minutes. Always be prepared for the worst. http://www.eazsolution.com/en/easyimage.php
