I have had a lot of trouble restoring my Windows XP partition on Boot Camp on Mac OS X Lion but I eventually got it to work.
My recommendations (based on my experience):
1. First enter the command prompt on Windows (Start > Run > cmd) and do "chkdsk /f /r"
2. Reboot into Windows and do step 1 again.
3. Then power down, boot back into Mac OS X and clone BOOTCAMP partition to an image e.g. using dd (Disk Utility may also work).
4. Swap hard drives if you intend to do this.
5. If restoring to existing Windows Partition skip to step 12
6. Otherwise swap hard drives use bootcamp assistant, restore your Mac OS X partition and use BootCamp Assistant (Applications > Utilities > BootCamp Assistant) to create a new Windows Partition.
7. Power down, insert XP CD and boot holding option key and select the CD.
8. Do a install with a quick erase.
9. Once the quick erase has completed and files have been installed force power off the mac (hold power button).
10. Boot into Mac OS (hold option key on boot and select Macintosh hard drive.
11. If you have read/write access delete all the files you can on the BOOTCAMP partition.
12. Restore BootCamp partition from the image you've created.
13. If you have different partitions to before (e.g. new disk with no recovery partition) then be sure to ensure that the boot.ini file in the root of the BOOTCAMP partition has the correct information (I think one of the steps following should fix this, but I'm not sure).
14. Try to boot into Windows. If it doesn't work read on.
15. Insert Windows installation CD, reboot Mac and hold down option key on boot.
16. Select the CD.
17. Enter the Recovery Console (press R when prompted)
18. Execute the command "fixboot" (please don't try a "fixmbr") . The "fixboot" command can fix some common problems.
19. Type exit (this will lead to the Mac being rebooted).
20. Hold down option key on boot and attempt to boot into Windows.
21. If that still doesn't work (my Mac rebooted part of the way through the Windows boot process), re-enter the recovery console and type "chkdsk /P /R"
22. Once this completes type exit and again attempt to boot into Windows. It should now work.
I spent ages trying to restore my Winclone image which I couldn't get to work (this could be because I didn't do some of the steps I mentioned above) and then using dd to clone directly from my old hdd to a new bootcamp partition. I eventually got the latter to work.
If you're wondering why I did this it was because of the new OWC SSD I installed in my MacBook.
I no longer have the Lion Recovery Partition (but I don't need it). I could've kept the Lion Recovery partition if I had restored from a Time Machine backup rather than cloning my installation of Mac OS X onto a new machine.
My recommendations (based on my experience):
1. First enter the command prompt on Windows (Start > Run > cmd) and do "chkdsk /f /r"
2. Reboot into Windows and do step 1 again.
3. Then power down, boot back into Mac OS X and clone BOOTCAMP partition to an image e.g. using dd (Disk Utility may also work).
4. Swap hard drives if you intend to do this.
5. If restoring to existing Windows Partition skip to step 12
6. Otherwise swap hard drives use bootcamp assistant, restore your Mac OS X partition and use BootCamp Assistant (Applications > Utilities > BootCamp Assistant) to create a new Windows Partition.
7. Power down, insert XP CD and boot holding option key and select the CD.
8. Do a install with a quick erase.
9. Once the quick erase has completed and files have been installed force power off the mac (hold power button).
10. Boot into Mac OS (hold option key on boot and select Macintosh hard drive.
11. If you have read/write access delete all the files you can on the BOOTCAMP partition.
12. Restore BootCamp partition from the image you've created.
13. If you have different partitions to before (e.g. new disk with no recovery partition) then be sure to ensure that the boot.ini file in the root of the BOOTCAMP partition has the correct information (I think one of the steps following should fix this, but I'm not sure).
14. Try to boot into Windows. If it doesn't work read on.
15. Insert Windows installation CD, reboot Mac and hold down option key on boot.
16. Select the CD.
17. Enter the Recovery Console (press R when prompted)
18. Execute the command "fixboot" (please don't try a "fixmbr") . The "fixboot" command can fix some common problems.
19. Type exit (this will lead to the Mac being rebooted).
20. Hold down option key on boot and attempt to boot into Windows.
21. If that still doesn't work (my Mac rebooted part of the way through the Windows boot process), re-enter the recovery console and type "chkdsk /P /R"
22. Once this completes type exit and again attempt to boot into Windows. It should now work.
I spent ages trying to restore my Winclone image which I couldn't get to work (this could be because I didn't do some of the steps I mentioned above) and then using dd to clone directly from my old hdd to a new bootcamp partition. I eventually got the latter to work.
If you're wondering why I did this it was because of the new OWC SSD I installed in my MacBook.
I no longer have the Lion Recovery Partition (but I don't need it). I could've kept the Lion Recovery partition if I had restored from a Time Machine backup rather than cloning my installation of Mac OS X onto a new machine.
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) using the Windows built in backup/restore program.