A second XP machine on an Intel iMac?

I've installed on an Intel iMac MacOS 10.5.2, XP SP2 in the Boot Camp partition (in FAT), and made a virtual machine with the Boot Camp XP. All that is working perfectly, and I'm very satisfied with Parallels, really.
But a limit of the Apple Boot Camp solution is that nothing exists for the backup of the Boot Camp partition. And, as an XP user, I know that the best way to make a backup (and the maintenance) of an XP partition is to boot another XP from another disk or partition. Then the answer seems obvious: make a second XP machine. Because the Boot Camp partition appears on the MacOS desktop, and it is in FAT, I think that this second machine will be able to read and write the Boot Camp partition (and to make a backup on my Firewire external drive). Here I need some advices.
Question 1: is all that possible, am I right or wrong ?
Question 2: Apple gives a set of drivers for XP, which I have installed on the Boot Camp partition. Do I need to install these drivers on my second XP partition, or will Parallels do all the job ?
Thank you for your wonderful product. IMHO, virtualization is the future of computing.

 

Just install a VM on your computer as if it were the only one, with no reference to the fact that there is also a BC install. Then, just point the BootCamp drive as a secondary disk on the machine.

 

Backup Boot Camp

Thank you, Eru Ithildur. I will try that, at least for the backup. I will compare with another solution that I've found, which works perfectly: a Vista WinPE BootCD. You can get this Pre-installation Environment for free at Microsoft, under the name "Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK)":
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...34-D890-4932-81A5-5B50C657DE08&displaylang=en
Because it's Vista, no problem with EFI and GUID, and it uses both processors.

 

If ya know what you are doing, that can probably do the trick, too.