"Xu" <xuxuxuxu@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:dGHuf.38686$Lb1.8053@bignews3.bellsouth.net.. .
>I am trying to learn how to clone my drive. I have dabbled with it and I
>see that the actual image would be 32gig in size. I am wondering what I
>can do to make this process smaller? I wonder if I reformatted and put XP
>on a separate partition if that would help because right now two clone
>programs I have tried both want to copy the hole HDD. I assume that is
>because I have everything on one partition.
>
> I have no floppy, so trying to use the disks for boot up is not much of an
> option for me unless I can use one of my sd disks in the card reader.
>
> What I want is a full copy of my system, and all the files that install in
> the Programs folder. That is all I want. I don't care about anything else,
> so it does not seem necessary that I copy the whole drive, which is
> actually a 75gig drive.

Try Norton Ghost. It will copy all the data in a partition, nothing more.
Therefore the destination partition will only need to be large enough to
accommodate your 32 gigs of data, plus provision for needed expansion.

Most emergency restore programs I'm familiar with require a floppy drive. I
certainly wouldn't be without one.

I keep my Windows XP system, programs, mail and data in separate partitions.
It sure simplifies restoring partitions without losing data.

Andy