TEST RESTORE IFW IMAGE

[Bob Coleman]

Brian K wrote:
> Alan,
>
> I don't understand what you are trying to accomplish. The best you can do
> is /vb with the backup and /vb with the restore.

I understand, but I don't have a good answer. Especially, if one is new to this, there is always the thought "I have this backup, but how do I know I can restore it"? Equally uncomfortable is committing to destroying a working system to prove that a restore will work.

Very understandable to me, but I don't have a good solution.

[Bob Coleman]

RockE wrote:
> I learned to trust creating images a few decades ago. I overcame my initial
> hesitation by (1) buying a spare disk like my boot drive, (2) buying an
> external drive to store images on, (3) creating an image of my boot drive
> (into a folder on my external drive), (4) restoring the image to my new
> spare drive, and (5) swapping the spare drive for the boot drive. When the
> system booted off of the newly restored drive I became a
> "believer" in imaging.
> If you aren't prepared to invest in hardware (and TeraByte software?) in
> order to support imaging yoour system(s) then you need to hire someone to
> do it for you.
> When initiating someone new into the "imaging habit" I show them
> how to image their systems themselves.

That's probably the best answer yet to the original question though it introduces potential new issues, namely the need to be comfortable with/qualified to remove and install drives. Trivial to many, probably, but might be daunting to others.

[TAC109]

Brian K wrote:
> Alan,
>
> I don't understand what you are trying to accomplish. The best you can do
> is /vb with the backup and /vb with the restore.

I would add to this by advising that when restoring, use /v as well as /vb. The /v will cause a preliminary check that the image to be restored is fully readable and ok, prior to the actual restore starting. There’s nothing worse than getting a read error on the drive containing the image, part way through a restore!

[Brian K]

TAC109 wrote:
>
> I would add to this by advising that when restoring, use /v as well as /vb.

I agree. I forgot about /v for the restore.

[DrTeeth]

On Fri, 4 Oct 2019 13:51:47 PDT, just as I was about to take a herb,
Bob Coleman disturbed my reverie and wrote:

>I assume you are talking about an image that contains (at least) an OS partition.
>
>First, I'd use byte-for-byte validate when creating the image, but that's not a test.
>
>I don't know any way to test a restore and guarantee that it was successful without at least minimal risk.
>
>If you have a second disk, you could restore to that.
>
>If you have extra space on the OS disk, you could restore to that.
>
>If you have a multi-boot setup that includes another copy of the OS, you could restore that and test that the restored to partition boots.
>
>Admittedly, I don't know that that absolutely guarantees that a restore to the same location that was imaged will be successful. Long experience leaves me with a high degree of confidence that it will, but having confidence is not the same as testing.

Wot he said!
--
Cheers,

DrT

** Amateurs built the Ark, but professionals built the Titanic.**

[tas3086]

Due to problems with a previous well known backup/restore suite vendor, I used to backup and test restore to a fake partition area on disk on every maintenance release. Even though their backup and verify operations worked perfectly, there were times that the restore would not be complete, or would not boot correctly. I did this for every update. That vendor had many complaints, but never seemed to answer any problems.

When I converted to Terabyte Unlimited applications, I started doing the same. But, after a few years of doing this, there was never an error. The responses on this forum site are consistently very fast, and corrective fixes are released if a problem is found almost immediately. Because of this, I stopped my testing procedure many years ago, and trust Terabytes procedures for testing and correcting problems.
It's a long story, but over time, trust and reliability are gained. I hope that you find the same experience with terabyte.

[TAC109]

Just to add to posts about the reliability of Terabyte products, I recently had to send my Surface Pro 4 back to Microsoft for a hardware fault. They sent me a refurbished unit as a replacement, and after restoring the image taken on the old machine, everything was back as it was! (The image consisted of a Full plus several Incrementals.)

I have been a satisfied user of this software since 2002 and have performed many partition-restores over this time.