Ghosting Programs & Files w/o os?

[imported_Skorpio]

I heard of people using norton ghost or other imaging software to make a backup of an image of their hard drive. My situation is that Im going to be changing from win xp pro to mce.

Since I cant upgrade, and dont want to really reinstall programs, is there options or programs that ghost the image of just the programs and not the operating system?

 

[birdpup]

Programs are binary files compiled with options and elements specific to a certain operating system. Changing the operating system means different programs will need to be installed.

Ghosting a partition/drive is really only useful for system files so the operating system can be operative after reinstalling the image. For data files all that is needed is to copy the files somewhere like a dvd or another hard drive.

This is a good reason to consider a second partition for data files with the operating system files on the first partition.
What is mce?

I wonder if I really even understand this question.

 

[imported_Skorpio]

MCE is short for windows media center editon....its a version of xp...most people use pro or home, but MCE is for like home theater pc's and stuff. The reason I asked is because if I install MCE over Pro I believe it would wipe the hard drive clean.

 

[birdpup]

Changing the operating system may possibly change the interface between the OS kernel and the installed programs. If this happened, the installed program files would need to be reinstalled. I have worked with Ghost, Powerquest, DriveImage, and Phoenix ImageCast and cannot think of any of those with the option to copy only the installed program files. The copy (Ghost) programs merely do a bit-by-bit copy of the partition so they work on a much lower, physical, level than the OS. It is possible the interface between XP and MCE is the same and merely performing an upgrade would do the trick, however upgrading Windows in such a manner is not recommended since the system files of the previous OS are still mixed in with the system files of the upgraded OS. This can easily cause confusion for the NTBootLoader, which would not know which operating system to load upon booting the computer since there are entries for two systems but only a complete set of files for the new system.

For such situations, it is recommended to format the partition and perform a fresh reinstall. But there is no way I know of to then copy a set of preinstalled applications back into the OS. Specific things like memory range allocations, interrupt request lines, drivers, and other low level interface mechanisms would not be coordinated properly and I presume it would lock up the whole system.

Here is a list of partition copying programs I am aware of:
1) Unix dd command (man dd),
2) Symantec Norton Ghost, which used to be PowerQuest DriveImage and PowerQuest Recovery Environment
3) Phoenix ImageCast
4) Acronis TrueImage
5) Image for Windows