XP NTFS Versus Windows 7 NTFS?

I have a triple boot system: XP 32 bit, XP 64 bit, Win7 Pro 64 bit, each on a separate partition on separate hard drives. I can backup each of the XP OS partitions with a program I wrote that basically does a file and folder copy to a folder in a spare partition on one of the hard drives. The copy program I wrote tries to preserve time stamp and short file name info, otherwise, it's just a file and folder copy program. I use windiff to verify after a backup (or restore). For a restore, I can quick format a partition and copy the files back (using the program I wrote).

I tried doing the same with the Win 7 OS partition, backup, quick format, restore, but some of the information (metadata?) is lost. All of the actual data is there, and windiff doesn't show any differences, and Win 7 boots up, but then there are issues. ATI video driver catalyst control center fails to run (don't recall error message). The publisher information for many (or most or all) of the programs is lost, causing User Acess Control dialog box to appear anytime I tried to run a program,which should be Microsoft, but shows up as unknown. Internet Explorer 8 will state that a program has corrupted the default search provider repeatedly (even after selecting one).

So something is different between Win 7 NTFS and Win XP NTFS, or I need to enhance my copy program to copy addtional file information when doing the copies. If I get the time, I'll try a drag and drop from windows explorer in XP to see if that makes any difference.So currently I'm stuck using Win 7 system image backup for the Win 7 OS partition (it also images the C partition which contains the boot files like bootmgr).