Backup Xandros and Install XP - HELP!

[Guest WearTheFoxHat]

Hey all,

I've been really loving this little EEE PC, but a former Microsoft techie, I find I can make Windows XP do things far easier than Xandros. I always end up reverting to Google and then semi-blindly copying and pasting the commands into the console! (Always wondered what "rm -rf" did!) :)

Anyway, I decided that I would like to install Windows XP and purchased a 16GB SDHC card. Mainly because I can get Bluetooth and USB tethering working far easier from XP than Linux. However from lots of forum reading it seems that installing XP on anything other than the SSD card is a bit of a pain in the butt. Therefore I have now changed my mind and plan to install it to the SSD, turn off disk indexing, remove the pagefile, move the hibernate file to the SDHC card (or it will take up 2GIG of space!).

I don't really intend to ever see the need to remove the SDHC card, as I have a USB reader which I can use when I want to grab photo's off my camera's SD HC card.

However I have a few questions and value/trust the input of the people on here moreso than other forums!

1. Backup Xandros. Before I dive into installing XP on my EEE PC, I would like to backup the Xandros install that I have. As I have got it customised in Advanced Desktop, with a modfied Kernel which recognises the 2GB RAM, and also makes the processor work at its full 900Mhz too.
   What is the easiest way to back this up to be restored should I ever need to?
   Ideally I guess Id like to use something akin to Symantec Ghost, and image it onto a USB drive.
   
2. USB CD Drive. I've read that people need USB CD drives, however I have a multitude of USB pendrives, and a 80GB USB portable disk. Could I simply not make one of those bootable and install XP from there? Is this easy enough?
   
3. I already have a slipstreamed XP installation with SP2. I was planning on installing a fairly standard XP onto the SSD, and just removing the Support and Valueadd directories, removing pagefile, moving documents and settings onto SDHC, turn off disk indexing etc. Is this ok, or should I really be looking at using nLite? Are there any other bits I should seek to remove from standard install too?
   
4. Should I slipstream SP3 too?
   

Thanks in advance

Cheers

WTFH

EEE PC:

4GB SSD

2GB RAM

USB Bluetooth

16GB SD HC Class 6

[Guest Prosody]

2. I don't have an external drive and so I installed my XP from a USB memory stick.

I used this tutorial here and had no problems installing.

http://www.eeetips.com/general-tutorials/i...usb-thumbdrive/

3. If you have a big SD card as you do then I wouldn't worry about nLiting too much. It is possible to save a few hundred meg but I'm taking up less than 3gig with XP, Office 2007, Feed Demon, Firefox, Photoshop CS3 Extended, Acronis 11, a 250 meg swap disk and 400 eg worth of pictures / docs on there.

When I get some memory and a SDHC card I will be moving what I can and then will leave the rest of the internal drive for updates and system tools etc.

4. I thought about slipstreaming SP3 but I want to wait till it released on the legit. I enable window updates every so often to keep up to date.