Dual booting/Partitioning Questions

Dell 1720 (Vista Home Premium)
Core 2 Duo T7250 @ 2 GHz
1920 x 1200 screen (AMAZING!!)
nividia 8600m gt (256mb)
250 gb hdd
2gb ram


Ok. Heres my plan. I want to dual boot Vista Home Premium (came on it) and XP, but as we all know, Dell made 4 partitions already... I have an external drive that I plan on using Norton Ghost 12 to image both the Backup partition (in case i need it...) and the Vista partition. I want to keep the diagnostics and the Media Direct partitions, so basically I want to rearrange and resize the Vista partition and the Backup Partition (it will be replaced by XP). I would then re-image the old vista image back onto the new vista partition. then I would go through the steps to dual boot XP in the other new partition.

My questions are:

1.) Is there any way that I can just rearrange the partitions and delete the recovery partition, then make a new xp partition (about 30gb) without reloading vista/ re-imaging?

2.)I've never used Ghost this way, so if I do need to re-image the vista partition to a newly created vista partition (before the xp one), how exactly is this done?

3.)If I do get that accomplished, will it still boot into vista? If not all I would need to do would be to repair it with the vista disk right?


Well before I get ahead of myself, this might be easier than I think, so I want some feedback.

So basically I want to change this configuration of partitions:

Dell Diagnostics
Recovery
Vista
Dell Media Direct

To this configuration of partitions:

Dell Diagnostics
Vista (rest)
XP (30gb)
Dell Media Direct

I want to do this, but I do not want to have to reinstall vista or loose any of my installed programs/files. If there is an easier way than I mentioned, PLEASE let me know.
Thanks in advance for your help!

 

After installing XP you'd probably lose Vista's booting capability, so, after you do so, just slap in a Vista DVD and fix the installation, it'll add XP in the boot menu that way, or you could use Hiren's Boot CD to do so after you install XP.

 

1.) Yes, you can. GParted can do it, though it will involve a bit of messing around after you "shift" the Vista partition into the empty space at the start of the drive. Making a partition for XP is dead easy. Doable under Vista. Gparted is on the systemrescuecd.

2.) I tried Ghost once, really didn't like it. I've read a lot of people are shunning Ghost nowadays. Acronis is a highly recommended one, though the systemrescuecd that you can get off the 'net has it's own imaging app, and it's free too. But I have no experience with it.

3.) Correct. Installing XP after Vista is already installed will overwrite the Vista boot thingy (Because XP doesn't know what Vista is). Doing a repair will fix it, but you'll need a BCD editor to be able to add XP to the boot options.

Systemrescuecd:
http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page

Dual Boot Vista & XP, with Vista installed first:
http://apcmag.com/5485/dualbooting_vista_and_xp

Be warned. The 1720 will require you to dig around for drivers. I can't give you complete advice on this, as I haven't gotten around to fully installing XP on my system (I've been messing around with slipstreaming the drivers, and borked up the sound, and haven't bothered to do much more since then, as I'm quite lazy )

 

Thanks for the help! I'm going to look into this GParted. I heard of it before and was wondering if it could do something like this.... Any help on how to use it so I don't have to mess around with my vista data?

 

Anything? I want to make sure that I can boot vista after I do the move, will I need to repair the MBR? Or will it still find vista to boot even though it is moved?

 

If I were you, I’d simply backup all the important data (take an image of the recovery partition if you really need it). Then install everything from scratch.

 

seriously, your plan is way jackedupbassackwards. WHY would you want to do it that way? Start from scratch.