Preparation of backup-drive for systempartition

[europanorama]

Had troubles finding the right steps for setting up backupdrives systempartition.
Wanted to "ghost" systempartition to a backupdrive.
Since 37gb was a bit too big for winxp/programs i thought 27gb would do.
1. after doing the steps in windows-own console and after "ghosting" drive would not boot.

a) i tried to use partiton magic-floppy-version no6 which had never let me go. but it informed me about 1024 cylinder problem and no-boot.
is there a 32gb-boundary? will it not boot any more when i will reduce its size smaller than 32gb?
b) or do i have to set the basic primary partition "active"?

2. i stopped using the working DBAN 1.07(thanks TRAIN) since it showed an excessive long scantime. a 250gb drive took 7 hours but the 200gb barracuda showed much more...
btw: to use ghost on boot-cd i had to remove my third 1gb stick of my 3x 1gb-memory. see my other thread.
Thanks a lot

[Train]

Dban , yes it take a long time, but remember it is making more than one pass too.

[europanorama]

1. Do i have to set primary system-partition "active" to make it bootable?

2. If yes or no, is there a 32gb-minimum for a systempartition?

3. when i had to decide setting drive as basic or dynamic i had troubles.
when it was dynamic drive was greyed out during system-partition-backup.
that could mean only basic drives can be bootdrives.
thanks a lot

[Train]

3. Dynamic just adds all the hdds space into one partition. Also a easy way to lose everything if something goes wrong.

1. I always set the first partiton as active. The rest is your choice, but you have a limit of 4 for active partitions. Boot loader will find the other OSs if installed on any partition.

2. XP has a 32 GB limitation if you use FAT32. Slipstream SP1 or SP2 and and get around the 128GB hdd limit.

[europanorama]

1. so the non-booting of the first partition was caused because it was not active. could copy partition to the remaining space from where it booted. dont remember if i made it active. ntfs only.
repeated the process by doing it right.