[CS-FSLUG] Managing Partitions/Backup software

[Nathan T.]

Hey list folks

I've done it again, my Windows partition is fried and needs to be  
restored. The story isn't too long so I'll tell you all about it.

Recently I got myself a small NAS box, the little thing came without  
a hard drive, but that wasn't hard to add and now I have a nice SMB  
and FTP file server with access control to boot. I started moving  
files over, then realized I no longer needed the storage partition on  
my Win/Linux desktop and started cleaning that up before deleting the  
partition. I got rid of the partition and everything was looking  
good, then I resized the Windows XP partition to take up the spare  
room using QtParted and that's when the trouble started.

QtParted resized the actual partition, but the formatted space was  
still the same. I couldn't shrink it back to the exact same size  
because that information was lost, and I couldn't use the Mandriva  
partitioner to fix it up either (although had I used that in the  
first place it might have worked).

Now I'm fed up, I don't want to have to reinstall Windows once again,  
it's a real pain in the backside dealing with an operating system  
that needs at least a dozen drivers, nearly a hundred different  
applications, at least a dozen reboots, and hundreds of patches every  
time it's installed clean. I can't ditch Windows right now because I  
still like playing my games, and I need it to run some of my  
hardware, so I'd like to find a backup solution that is no longer  
dependent on the partition size remaining the same.

I want some suggestions on backup solutions that do not require me to  
be running Windows to restore the backup, and that will not require  
the partition size to be the same. Particularly though I would like  
something I can use on more than one machine, and is easy to use. At  
this point I don't mind going with a commercial package, in fact  
earlier I was looking at Partition Magic, which tragically is now  
owned by Norton now.