Would this macrium restore experiment work??

provlima · 26 Feb 2018

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??

dalchina · 26 Feb 2018

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.

provlima · 26 Feb 2018

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....

dalchina · 26 Feb 2018

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?

provlima · 26 Feb 2018

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]

dalchina · 26 Feb 2018

Would this macrium restore experiment work??-1.jpg

Bottom right option.

Macrium has an extensive help file.

ThrashZone · 26 Feb 2018

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 :)

cereberus · 26 Feb 2018

dalchina said:

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.

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).

RolandJS · 26 Feb 2018

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.

provlima · 26 Feb 2018

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