Windows 10: Would this macrium restore experiment work??

I have a macrium restore image on an external backup drive.

Can I configure my pc to use this external drive as a boot up drive to verify that it is in fact a clone of the original drive??

:)

 

system image

Not quite sure if Macrium would work but worth giving a try:

https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/61026-backu...

 

windows backup to usb

In addition to the advice, I would like to let you know that Windows backup features are deprecated and are planned to remove in future versions of Windows. I would suggest you to switch to Macrium Reflect:

https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/61026-backu...

 

Short answer - no.
It's a bit like taking a zip file of your OS (and related partitions assuming you'd imaged Windows partitions - if it were possible to make such a zip- which it isn't) and sticking that zip file onto a bootable disk and somehow hoping you could boot into Windows.

The image file is (normally - forensic imaging aside) a compressed copy of the used parts of the partitions and/or disks selected.

You would have to restore the image to a drive to make use of it.

 

Thanks for your reply...what I meant was using the macrium restore function to create a mirror image on another hdd and than attempting to boot from the cloned drive.
I am trying to verify that the cloned file would in fact be an en exact clone of the original drive it was copied from. Hope this makes sense....

 

That should be fine- if you really wanted to go that far. Naturally you'd have to arrange to have only 1 bootable drive in your PC at a time.

Was your image actually a clone of a disk, or an image of (all of) the Windows partitions? (Windows is comprised of 4 partitions typically for a UEFI installation).

Are you aware of the ability to verify images when they are created?

 

Thank you for your response...no I am not familiar on how to verify images when they are created. How is it done?

Was your image actually a clone of a disk, or an image of (all of) the Windows partitions? (Windows is comprised of 4 partitions typically for a UEFI installation).

Are you aware of the ability to verify images when they are created?[/QUOTE]

 

Bottom right option.

Macrium has an extensive help file.

 

Hi,
Only 2 ways to make sure an image will work
Use verify image after creating it or anytime after it's created.
2nd is to actually restore the system image to another ssd or hdd and see for yourself *Smile

 

You can actually if you have PRO, opening image with Viboot as a Hyper-V VM.

Another good and perhaps better test is to restore image to a virtual hard drive (or a separate hard drive).

 

I may dumb as a post speed-reading this; are we, starting with the OP, using the words "clone" and "image" interchangeably? I thought the OP opened up with the word clone -- asked about booting an external HD, which by implication, is the OP's target clone HD, which indeed can be set to boot within said computer's BIOS menu. Or, did I read the opening wrong?
Addendum: I just now remembered this is Windows 10 forum, not Windows 7 forum! The above will be rather difficult to do within the UEFI.

 

Thanks for chiming in Roland...so are you saying that I can set my PC to boot up from the external backup drive with the clone image and it would boot up like the original drive I cloned from? Or would there be an intermediate step invoving the restoring the cloned image

 

If you have a drive which is a clone - an exact copy- of another- then you should be able to use them interchangeably.

That's what a clone is. An exact copy.

You can clone a disk with MR.
Cloning a disk - KnowledgeBase - Macrium Reflect Knowledgebase
You can create disk images with MR
http://updates.macrium.com/reflect/v...user_guide.pdf
- you can read about disk cloning and disk imaging - links on the left hand side.
The two are very very different.
Your first post referred to a disk image.

 

In simple terms, a clone is a faithfull copy of an existing drive to a new drive.

A system image is a compressed file containting details of drive that has been imaged. The primary purpose of an image is to restore original drive to state at time image was taken. However, you can restore the image to another drive which is basically like cloning but with intermediate steps.

An image is good for backups and is just a file so you can store other files on drive with backup image. You can have multiple backups at different stages.

Cloning wipes everything on target drive.

Cloning is really used when you want to replace one drive with another eg an ssd for an hdd. It is not best suited for backups.

 

"...t is not best suited for backups..." +1! In my experience, full images of my OS and Data partitions, including System Reserved partition, saved routinely onto external media, rather than clones being made, works better for me when a restore is in order. I've had to restore OS several times, and in doing so, the Data partition remains undisturbed.