How often do you Verify your Macrium Reflect backup images?

storageman said:

The amount of time it takes to do the verify when creating a Full or incremental or Differential version is really small. I have it set as an option default so it does it all of the time. But since I've never had a error, I always wonder if there is Repair function if it detects an error ?

Small - no way - it takes a significant fraction of the time in my experience.

KabyBlue said:

Interesting point...

Also in my experience, when using Macrium to attempt to create an Image from a buddy's PC that we suspected had failing sectors, it actually stopped half way with an error about reading the disk. Point being if there was an issue with a potential image, my guess would be it would probably not complete successfully...

Although MR can ignore errors if you set it to do so, in the end, I would only use this option to get as much data backed up as possible. The discussion here assumes the drive is read ok but not written to image ok. In the end, my experience tells me from literally hundreds of backups is that MR fails so rarely, wasting time on verifying image is pointless.

As I said, verification is really a hangover from DVD backup days when write could be more flakey.

Can anybody even remember a verification failing?

jimbo45 said:

Hi there
verification is one thing -- can't say I've had it fail, but testing every so often a restore is another matter -- I've had - not often but certainly more than once where restore has failed for various reasons.

I randomly check a restore about once a month, and usually have more than one backup --i.e backup to 2 different disks -- chances of 2 HDD's failing at the same time are insignificant.

Cheers
jimbo

If you have PRO, a great way to check if an image will restore is to simply open it in Macrium Viboot.

Macrium have indicated an addon will be available in virtualbox to run images as a VM in near future. No specific plans afaik for VMware at the moment.

I verify automatically after every backup.

The only issue I ever had with Macrium Reflect was when it would not restore any backup image. I keep several and never verify.

The problem was MBR virus. The solution was to boot into AOMEI PE and wipe windows partition. Only then could Macrium restore a backup image.

cereberus said:

Although MR can ignore errors if you set it to do so, in the end, I would only use this option to get as much data backed up as possible. The discussion here assumes the drive is read ok but not written to image ok. In the end, my experience tells me from literally hundreds of backups is that MR fails so rarely, wasting time on verifying image is pointless.

As I said, verification is really a hangover from DVD backup days when write could be more flakey.

Can anybody even remember a verification failing?

Yep. Back when there were VSS errors ad nauseum with Macrium, but that was a long time back. Usually would croak on verify at the 2-3% stage.

f14tomcat said:

Yep. Back when there were VSS errors ad nauseum with Macrium, but that was a long time back. Usually would croak on verify at the 2-3% stage.

Yeah - my point really was (these days) verification fails so rarely that it means it is barely needed any more.

Today, I burnt a dvd of a video and it took three attempts to write - as dvds were the cheapest form of mass media a few years back, then verification was essential (still essential if you still use dvds - even then I would backup to an hdd first, and use reliable burning software).

Frankly (imo) verification really is not needed on modern hard drives.


Of course, if doing a verification gives a user "comfort factor", then fine.

cereberus said:

Yeah - my point really was (these days) verification fails so rarely that it means it is barely needed any more.

Today, I burnt a dvd of a video and it took three attempts to write - as dvds were the cheapest form of mass media a few years back, then verification was essential (still essential if you still use dvds - even then I would backup to an hdd first, and use reliable burning software).

Frankly (imo) verification really is not needed on modern hard drives.


Of course, if doing a verification gives a user "comfort factor", then fine.

Not really "comfort factor", like a blanky, just 2-3 minutes well spent. IMO.