Windows 10: Macrium Reflect Set & Forget Question. How do I know it won't fail me?

You can boot from your emergency macrium cd/dvd and restore a couple of files from your backup file. This should give you some comfort.

 

Hi folks

The real answer to this question is that of course you can't know -- just like if you get into a plane will it have an accident. Statistically plane travel (sorry "Friends of the earth" people etc) is actually the safest form of transport on the planet --you are more likely to have an accident on the way to the airport than actually in the plane.

So realistically with Macrium the chances of backups failing are not very high so long as you have at least 2 copies on different HDD's etc.

I'd either try it out first on a spare machine or on a VM --if using a VM set the boot device as the stand alone bootable version of the iso. (the ISO downloaded from the macrium site). You of course need to test a restore to have any confidence in it --just because the backups work does not mean that the restores will automatically be OK so TEST first. A VM is a good idea.

If the initial (or first) test restore works I think you shouldn't have any further worries. If it fails then you need to find out what's wrong - so don't think just because a backup works the restore will automatically be good. It should of course --but lots of "Should things" on computers just don't work like that.

I really recommend testing first time on a VM -- you can create a VM -- don't worry about activating the Windows VM --all you want to do is test to see if the restore works so you can create a VM of your existing W10- system even if it's not activated. So long as the restore boots OK you are "in business".

Cheers

jimbo