With regard to XP.
When doing a restore to any drive other than C: there can be trouble with BOO.,INI and NTLDR files. This is what has happened to me several times. The BOOT.INI points to the wrong partition after a restore is done. I had to boot up with a CD and edit the BOOT.INI file.
And when there is more that one primary and more that one logical, the windows partition naming order becomes confusing. Or maybe it is the drive letters that are censusing. It confuses me. Right now I am on partition 2, a primary. It has drive letter G:. Bute partition 3, the first logical, is drive D: and if I need to do arestore i have to be very carefull where I put it.