Dual-booting my XPS M1210 / Vista Recovery partition

I just got my XPS M1210, and while it looks nice, its performance seems a bit on the downside - Flip3D and Aero windows fading in/out occasionally lag until I restart the DWM service, and the sound occasionally stutters when playing music. I'm suspecting the Vista drivers for the M1210 aren't ready yet. And yes, this is right after I did a clean install of Vista using the Vista 32-bit install DVD from Dell, and installing the latest drivers from Dell.com. My intentions are to now install a copy of XP on this laptop for gaming purposes... I'm not so sure Vista can run my games well.

There's one problem. Dell Vista laptops aren't similar to Dell XP laptops in the sense that the recovery partition is hidden. It's exposed to the user as a 10 GB partition (for me anyway). It resides right before the Vista partition and given the drive letter D. Why Dell chose to place the recovery partition on the fastest part of the HD is beyond me, but anyway...

My current partition config is like this:

- 55 MB, possibly the Dell Utilities partition
- 10 GB, recovery
- 99.74 GB, the OS
- 2 GB, possibly the MediaDirect partition

I want my config to look something like this in order to accomodate a copy of XP:

- 55 MB
- 30 GB, for XP
- (remaining space for Vista)
- 2 GB for MD

but my only question is, is it possible to burn the recovery partition (which amounts to almost 4.1 GB) to a standard 4.7 GB DVD-R and still be able to boot off this DVD somehow? Right now the contents of that partition are accessible through the F8 menu invoked before Vista starts.

Secondly, what partitioning software can I use to resize my partitions? Disk Management under Vista sucks - only basic extend and shrink operations that don't require shifting data a few GB forward or backward, like what PartitionMagic does. I'd use my copy of PM8 (the version before Symantec bought out Powerquest), but I'm unsure if it'll work properly under Vista.

Any suggestions or tips? Thanks.

 

No, you can't boot into it if you burn it on a DVD

Use Partition Magic

 

burn a copy of the recovery partition with ghost actually tou can burn a image of your full harddrive with ghost and restore only the paritions you want
jim

 

Yes, you can restore the partitions later, but you can't directly boot from them

 

Strangely, after I attempted another reinstall, and installed the drivers off the disc Dell gave me (not the drivers off Dell.com), and avoided installing the Sigmatel audio driver, my music plays without skips and everything seems to fly on this laptop. =)

The only thing that's nitpicking is my WEI score - a 2.0, because of these drivers. :/

For now I'll hold off on installing XP, unless someone else can figure out a way to boot off a copy of the restore partition.

@hehe299792458: you sure PM8 works in Vista?