Testing Backups - Something I came across

[Wainuitech]

See what happens when you get bored    

From time to time Someone will ask about backing up computers, to which there are usually a few replies.

One Common Program that's Mentioned (For good reasons) is Macrium Reflect.

While backups can be made, unless you run them from another spare drive or in viBoot which needes Windows Hyper-V  activated, ( not available in home editions) Then there's no real way to determine if the full backup you just made has actually worked. A non working / Corrupted backup is useless, no point finding out when its actually needed.

SO how can you test ???

Came across the following article -- Just gave it a go, took just over 7 minutes to lay the image back over the LAN and a further 2 minutes to boot to a working VM.

Only thing I'll add in is on step 9 Make sure you hit F12 ( if using Oracle) and select The Hard Drive, other wise it will boot back into the Marcum ISO again .

The Article  https://www.elevenforum.com/t/testing-ma...hine.6780/

Edited: just relooked and some of the settings in the article are a little old, example you can select a ISO to boot from instead of using the Optical drive as suggested.  Might do a video of the whole process if any one wants it ?

[R2x1]

That sounds like good stuff   

[Mzee]

See what happens when you get bored    

From time to time Someone will ask about backing up computers, to which there are usually a few replies.

One Common Program that's Mentioned (For good reasons) is Macrium Reflect.

While backups can be made, unless you run them from another spare drive or in viBoot which needes Windows Hyper-V  activated, ( not available in home editions) Then there's no real way to determine if the full backup you just made has actually worked. A non working / Corrupted backup is useless, no point finding out when its actually needed.

SO how can you test ???

Came across the following article -- Just gave it a go, took just over 7 minutes to lay the image back over the LAN and a further 2 minutes to boot to a working VM.

Only thing I'll add in is on step 9 Make sure you hit F12 ( if using Oracle) and select The Hard Drive, other wise it will boot back into the Marcum ISO again .

The Article  https://www.elevenforum.com/t/testing-ma...hine.6780/

Edited: just relooked and some of the settings in the article are a little old, example you can select a ISO to boot from instead of using the Optical drive as suggested.  Might do a video of the whole process if any one wants it ?

I boot Macrium from USB stick, that way I can verify the Image straight away.

[king1]

i usually just use macrium to mount the image and explore it, if you can do that I am comfortable that the image is a good one... Doesn't test as a running system, but good to know the files are accessible.
I can only recall once where the image was corrupt and i couldn't open it...