Being able to overwrite and restore existing boot drive - best way

Hello all,

A friend recommened the Acronis software and so far I have managed to back up my 50GB SATA laptop drive (to a portable drive) and replace the laptop drive with a new 500GB drive, restore the backup, reboot the system ok (no problem) and then used Disk Director to create a logical partition out of the remaining space then increased my C: drive to the full size of the drive. No problems, not a hitch.

This laptop is a Lenovo R60 running XP PRO, it is my portable (personal) computer and has (2) users set up. One user is my standard use and the other user is for backing up and syncing my Iphone (which was maxing out my smaller drive). With all that said, I was sucessful and it worked.

I have also purchased new drives for my desktop and will be starting from scratch with it as it was consumed with viruses. (I have all my data though).

I also have also purchased an additional 500GB drive for the laptop. (they are inexpensive)

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So, I have a laptop and two desktops to maintain in the future.

My goal is to create a primariy partition in each machine and place the software there and operating system (boot drive). A second partition will contain my data, and perhaps a third partition will contain a "clean" clone of the first partition that can be restored if needed (or I can keep it on a portable drive or both).

The laptop is the first challenge it came with: (windows is preloaded and there is no disk provided)
Preload (C:)
NTFS (E:)
SERVICEV0001

The operating system (Windows disk) copy is in a separate partition and C:drive is called a "preload". There appears to be a third item "SERVICEV0001" or that has to be backed up also. They all appear separately during the backup in the Acronis software.

The desktop will be the easiest, since I have all of the software disks and operating system separtely it will have only bootable C: drive to worry about.

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The question is, can I just back up the (3) items on the laptop (above) C: drive and boot partitions to make a restore "CLONE" or do you have to back up the entire drive to make the CLONE bootable?

My two computers will not have the same software so I'm not intending on using only one backup. I'll have to do them separately.

In the end, I'd like to just be able to do a quick restore of my primary boot partitions and hopefully just virus check the other partitions.

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I'd like to hear your plan and possibly what I'm up against. I did buy an additional drive for both machines so I'll be able to do a true test once the plan is ready.

Thanks for any help.
Kind regards,
Bob