Make a backup of my Windows XP system partition with Linux possible

[Actionguy]

hello to all
I wish to make a backup of my system partition (Windows XP), but instead use a shareware software (Windows), I would like to know if I can simply copy and paste my partition C: to F: (for example) from Ubuntu?
Ubuntu would be launched from a CD during the boot, so without windows, without using my C: drive. Is this feasible, or Ubuntu still uses the resources of the system disk C:?

[Team Leader]

If you want to change the boundaries of partitions you use a "resizing" tool.

For MS Windoze systems it would be proprietary system like Partition Magic.

For Linux systems there are free Parted Magic and Gparted which offer Live CD.

It doesn't appear to me that you need to reformat the drive at all as you have only 4 partitions and one is unused. Thus you can use the last one for the installation of another Windows.

In using Linux's tool you just drag the partition boundaries to reduce space on one and expand the other. A good practice is to one task at a time, check the result before moving on to another task. It pays to use the latest version of the software too.

[Expertz]

Read Your Linux Partition from Windows with DiskInternals Linux Reader
There are two programs that allow Windows to read and write to Ext3 partitions as if they were native filesystems. DiskInternals Linux Reader is a similar program for read-only access.

Linux Reader is not a driver, and it does not integrate with Window’s file manager. It’s a separate program that resembles Windows XP’s file manager.

Linux Reader lists all of the Linux partitions and can browse them as you would expect. There is a preview for image files on the sidebar, but to open a file it must be saved to a Windows partition.

Linux Reader is freeware and runs on just about every version of Windows.

[Lillebror]

I've been doing a backup to a XFS partition (using rsync snapshots) from an NTFS/Windows XP partition that I need often backups of. A few days ago I had a hard drive loss, so I went to restore, here are the steps I used:

Got a new hard drive in and:
1) cfdisk /dev/hda (Use '07' for the type, set boot flag)
2) mkfs.ntfs /dev/hda1
3) (mounted with ntfs-3g)
4) Restored the files from my XFS backup partition
5) Setup grub as it is on the Windows machine

After I reboot, I select the Windows partition in grub exactly as it was also restored and it tells me something went wrong and I need to insert a system disk (sorry, I didn't write down the complete error message).

Luckily for me, the drive wasn't completely trashed so I got the old hard drive and:
1) ntfsclone'd the old drive onto the new one
2) Used ntfsresize

This worked perfectly. This also means I need to either figure out what went wrong the first time, or change my backup method to a full backup rather than a incremental backup.