Hi Everyone

I have recently bought me a netbook with Win 7 starter and am very happy with it. However I would like to go back to my Linux background by partitioning the HDD and as such be able to dual boot.

But the problem I am facing is that the OS & software are sitting on a separate partition which means I will lose all this if I wipe the partition. So before I proceed I want to back up the paritions.

What I am planning to do is boot Linux from a memory stick and then run G4L in order to try and Ghost the HDD. After I have ghosted the HDD I then want to partition it and put the Ghost image back on.

I am not sure if this will work though and would like to find out if someone else has tried this yet?
If this will not work, are there any other recomendations to backup the partitions and then recreate 2 partitions on which I can put the files back?

TIA

I have had two experiences I'll share.

First of all, I have a newbook that came with W7. I had no interest in W7, so I partitioned the disk and installed Ubuntu. I'm sure there are other distros you can use. The CPU on the netbook is a 1.6 ghz N450. More than fast enough for its use.

Second was my daughters laptop. It came with four primary partitions. That made it a little more difficult. Since I did't want to loose a partition ( the data ), I used Clonezilla to back up one of the smaller partitions. Once I did that, I deleted that primary partition, I shrank the enormous W7 'C' partition. That left lots of space for what she needed.

I created an extended partition, and within it, created a partition to hole the primary partitions data I had removed. The rest of the space could have been used for partitions to hole a linux system. Her use was for a 'D' drive for W7.

Its been a very long time since I used Ghost. I see no reason why you can not use it to back up a partition, and then restore it.

BTW, can only create four primary partitions on a single hard drive. You can have as many as you want on an extended partition. The four primary partitions done by manufactures is an inconvenience. Not sure what their motive is. They do not encourage users to re-partition their drives. If the system goes back for maintenance, they may 'ghost' it back to the original scheme.

Bottom line, yes it will work. You do need to understand how to partition though.