I am just in big trouble: Harddisk wasn't seen at startup and assuming it is defect, I installed a new one (160GB) and partitioned with PartionMagic8 like the old one.
Then I reloaded an image (made with DriveImage7) back to the new hd.

But WinXP didn't start, inspecting the HD, showed that C-partition was spoiled by the reload.

At the end, I made a new installation of WinXP on the new reformatted HD and made an image again. But playing it back, the same desaster happened.

Now I am anxious, that my backup philosophy using DriveImage and PartionMagic will not work?
As long this is not secure, all other tools seem not to help. Even WinRescue can't help me, which it did all over the years many times.

Any hints for me??
Gerhard

   It sounds like either DriveImage didn't work or you did not put the new harddrive in the right place and so it did not boot.

it was jumpered as master. Now I will see how to check the DriveImage.
Gerhard

Partition images usually do not contain the master boot record, snce that is a property of the disk as a whole, not just one partition.  Restoring such an image to a blank hard drive will not result in a bootable drive.  However, most imaging software has an option to make an image of the whole disk, including the boot record.  Such an image should allow you to clone the system to a blank, unpartitoned, unformatted hard drive.

I am more puzzled about the inability to do a simple restore to the same hard drive.  I do that several times a year with GHOST 2003 and also with True Image 8.  In theory, Drive Image should be able to do this as well.

Thoughts:  (1) Is this a simple IDE disk (not SATA, not SCSI, not part of a RAID array)?  If yes, then backup/restore should be easy.  But, if one of the above, backup may work, but restore might be more difficult, depending on exactly how the disk is accessed.  You might try the Drive Image support site for hints.

(2) Is this a large disk, possibly larger than the maximum size that Drive Image 7 can handle?

(3) Is the disk compressed or encrypted?  Some programs expect "simple" disk structures.

(4)  Do you use a thrid-party boot manager?

(5)  In the case of XP, is it on C:\?  It does not need to be, but a few key boot files must be on C:, even if XP is installed on some other partition.

(6) Do you have a copy of a retail XP CD?  If so, try running the recovery console and see what it thinks of the post-recovery partitions.  Can it see the disk at all, the partitions, does it recognize that one partition has a version of XP on it, etc.    The recovery console can be used to fix a few things, like make a new master boot record and a new boot.ini file.  The following links discuss the XP recovery cnsole:

http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/win_xp_rec.htm

http://www.wown.com/j_helmig/wxprcons.htm

http://www.xxcopy.com/xxcopy33.htm  (near bottom)

http://www.webtree.ca/windowsxp/repair_xp.htm (ISO, about number 26 in list)