One backup to restore on 2 computers

oao said:

Of course I am aware. That was a conscious decision to stop updating -- I want nothing to do with anything beyond what I already have. Watching the mess that has become Windows10 and what people who keep up with it have been going through without any justification, I am very glad I got off that wagon.

Nothing negative meant, no way of knowing your background with this issue.

oao said:

No such problem.

I use one in the office and one on travel -- they are always used sequentially, one after the other. This is to equally distribute wear equally and have a backup when one fails.

My concern is that the restored systm won't boot, or have problems.

I'm not sure what to say to that. All of us here who regularly make backups, using Macrium, one for each system they may have, very rarely have a boot problem, or after restore problems. If the image is successful and verified successfully, there should be no issues.

f14tomcat said:

I'm not sure what to say to that. All of us here who regularly make backups, using Macrium, one for each system they may have, very rarely have a boot problem, or after restore problems. If the image is successful and verified successfully, there should be no issues.

Op wants to restore same image to two devices. It will probably work but not 100% guaranteed unless both devices were 100% identical (even nominally identical devices can have different internal components depending on production run).

cereberus said:

Op wants to restore same image to two devices. It will probably work but not 100% guaranteed unless both devices were 100% identical (even nominally identical devices can have different internal components depending on production run).

Yes, I know what the OP wants to do. I was in on this from the beginning. Was addressing his latest concern about what would happen, which is, of course, an unknown.

I am trying to find a way to backup either and use the same image to restore either of them when necessary. AFAIK, the way license keys work, this isn't possible.
Does anybody know of a way to do that?

My answer to you is definitely YES. You can backup on one then restore in the other. MS Server will check your Machine ID and re-activate your license accordingly. By doing this, your SID will be the same on both machines (ie. if you have one user John Doe in one machine and create the same user John Doe in the other machine, the user names are identical but each will have separate SID which Windows will look at and check permission) so you don't have to worry about permission problem. For personal use, this is better. Not recommend in Business environment.

NOTE: When you restore to other PC. Make sure you also change the COMPUTER NAME so they are unique to each machine.

oao said:

Thanx.

I will probably do it at some point.

If I understand it correctly, I will be the same user on both systems, but I will have diff SID on each system.

No, If you use the same image file for both PC's then you'll get the same use and SID.
If you install Windows separately for each PC then even you use the same user name, the SID will be unique for each user.

Make sure that you change the Computer Name for the second PC so that it will be unique then you won't have problem with networking.

Duplicate SIDs can be a pain in an Enterprise environment. This is Microsoft's stated policy on 'cloned' PC images.

Cloning or duplicating an installation without taking the recommended steps could lead to duplicate SIDs. For removable media, a duplicate SID might give an account access to files even though NTFS permissions for the account specifically deny access to those files. Because the SID identifies both the computer or domain and the user, unique SIDs are necessary to maintain support for current and future programs....

...We do not provide support for computers that are set up by using SID-duplicating tools other than the System Preparation tool...

https://support.microsoft.com/help/3...-installations