"Adam" wrote:

I'm looking for partitioning software that is capable of
backing up (or copying) existing FAT32 bootable partitions.
Are the partitioning software you mention capable of this?


You're looling for what is frequently called a "disk cloning"
or "imaging" utility. PowerQuest's Drive Image 7.x (now
Norton's Ghost 9.0), Acronis' True Image, and several others
do this, not partitioning utilities. Xxcopy does this, too, but
I've not heard much about it except that it's free (see their
website at http:\\www.xxCopy.com ). If you want the cloned
partition to be bootable (assuming it contains an operating
system), tell the utility to copy the Master Boot Record
("MBR") as well. On the 1st boot-up of the clone, don't let
the original OS be visible to the clone or the clone will hook
into files on the original drive and the clone thereafter won't
run without the original OS present. To do this, just disconnect
the original drive and put the clone in its place for that 1st
boot-up. Thereafter, the clone can be booted even with the
original visible to it.

If you have WinXP (or Win2K) (and if the clone drive has
the space), you can put at least 4 copies of the original OS
on the clone drive, and each can be bootable from its separate
*primary* partition. (It may be the case that WinXP/2K can be
booted from a logical drive, but I've never put a clone into a
logical drive.) You can then use WinXP/2K's) multi- boot
feature to select the clone for booting at boot time. You would
have to adjust the original drive's boot.ini file (at C:\boot.ini) to
add a line pointing to the clone to include it in the original drive's
boot menu to do that, but that is trivial if you know the boot.ini
syntax. Since your clone(s) might also act as emergency
copies of the original in the event the original drive crashes,
you ought to adjust the boot.ini file in the "active" partition on
your clone drive as well. You can make any partition on a drive
the "active" partition by using Disk Management (rt-click on
My Computer, click Manage, click Disk Management), and that
indicates that the boot.ini file in that partition will be used for the
boot menu of OSes to select from. When pointing to partitions
with boot.ini, remember that the 1st partition on the drive is
known as "partition(1)", the 2nd partition as "partition(2)", etc.
You can use the part of the boot.ini file that is in quotes to
call each OS whatever you want.

If the original drive crashes, just pop the archive drive in its
place and boot the OS version that you want. Otherwise, you
can keep the archive drive connected where it is, and you can
boot into it by adjusting the boot sequence in the BIOS.

If you have WinXP and the archive drive is selected by the
BIOS' boot sequence, the boot.ini file in the drive's "active"
partition will let you select which partition (i.e. which OS version)
to boot into. Keep in mind that the boot.ini file in the "active"
partition will always think it's in the booted partition (called
"Logical Disk (C" by Windows), so set the rdisk() lines in
boot.ini file to point appropriately to "this" hard drive (i.e rdisk(0) )
or to "the next" hard drive (i.e. rdisk(1) ) or "the one after that"
(i.e. rdisk(2) ). This sequence of hard drives, by the way, is
determined by the boot sequence in the BIOS, and by adjusting
that sequence, you adjust what is meant by "this drive",
"the next drive", and "the one after that".

*TimDaniels*