How to test macrium backup

I am somehow not understanding how to do this.

I have Macrium Free and I created a backup on DVD and an image of the C:/ drive on an external WD drive. All appears good.

Macrium says test the backup to ensure it works. So I connect the ext HD and put the DVD in the drive.

With my dell, I go to Settings / Recovery / Advanced Startup Options (or something like that). It says click this to boot into a DVD or USB or other options. I do and the pc goes to a screen and I click the one with a pic of DVD and USB. It says select a device and then lists Onboard NIC (IPV4) and Onboard Device NIC (IPV6), I click either and PC restarts and boots into windows as normal.

Today I went into the BIOS via F2 at startup and, again, my only options for Boot Option Priorities are

Boot Option #1 Windows Boot Manager
Boot Option #2 Onboard NIC IPV4
Boot Option #3 Onboard NIC IPV6

Where's the boot into DVD?

Am I missing something? My ol' gray mare (and onboard brain) ain't what she used to be so I suspect I am. How do I test the Macrium backup and image? Or how do I boot into a DVD as a test on this Dell?

Many thanks! Robby

robbyk333 said:

...how do I boot into a DVD as a test on this Dell?

On my Dell, I press F12 rather than F2. Instead of going into the bios, F12 give a one-time boot menu allowing me to choose the device to boot from. I chose usb (as I don't have an optical drive on this Dell) and it will boot from my Macrium recovery usb.

Alright Bree, I'll try that.

Also can you tell me, is this the right order?

1. Attach USB or load a DVD with backup
2. Attach External HD with image
3. Shutdown / Start (restart does not give me the Dell logo)
4. F12
5. Select onetime restart
6. Check backup

Also what will appear if it works? A macrium screen or something else?

robbyk333 said:

...can you tell me, is this the right order?
1. Attach USB or load a DVD with backup
2. Attach External HD with image
3. Shutdown / Start (restart does not give me the Dell logo) 4. F12 5. Select onetime restart 6. Check backup

Also what will appear if it works? A macrium screen or something else?

Last question first, what you should get when you boot from the macrium recovery media should first be the normal 'loading' logo, usually the classic 'blue window' (or possibly the the Dell logo). This is followed by a Macrium splash screen saying 'loading....'. Then when booting is complete you see Macrium full screen almost identical to the Macrium screen you see in Windows. The main difference is that it opens on the Restore tab rather than the Backup tab. At the bottom of the screen is a simple taskbar. Here you will find (reading from the left) a Power button to shut down when you're done, a command prompt and the Macrium PE Explorer (a simple file explorer).

It is not critical when you attach the external HDD. I usually wait until Macrium has booted before attaching it. The recovery environment is 'plug and play' just like Windows.

I am surprised you don't get the Dell logo on a Restart, this is probably due to being a desktop and the bios not recognising your monitor at that stage of the boot. My Dell is a laptop so does not have such problems.

To be able to use the F2 or F12 keys at boot you need to perform a full start up from cold. A Restart guarantees a cold boot. In order to get a cold boot from Shut down / Start you must turn off Fast Startup in Windows. With Fast Startup enabled in Windows the start up is a warm boot (more like resuming from hibernation) and the bios skips the step where you could use the F2/F12 keys.

Turn On or Off Fast Startup in Windows 10 | Tutorials

To check the backup, you could click 'Browse for an image file...', find and select your image then on its 'Other actions...' menu select 'Verify Image'.

Have you actually created a Reflect recovery drive on DVD or a USB stick? You need to boot to that recovery drive then peruse your recovery media to recover from the backup image.

Other checks are to use viBoot to boot from the recovery image using a virtual machine. You can also mount ant partition from a backup image as a virtual drive and peruse the contents - but this doesn't confirm the backup is a working bootable version.

Steve C said:

Have you actually created a Reflect recovery drive on DVD or a USB stick? You need to boot to that recovery drive then peruse your recovery media to recover from the backup image.

Yes sir, I have a recovery drive on DVD, all went well during that process with the VIM mounted, etc. It says the drive was successfully created. And I also have a disc image on a Western Digital external HD large enough to store two images.

We'll see how it goes today when I get to my studio (the Dell pc is my DAW), but so far I cannot get the Dell to boot to a DVD drive. It boots only to a NIC IPV4 or 6, whatever that is with F2.

Today I'll try F12. I'm really looking forward to confirming this, as my goal is to upgrade to Win 10 Pro so I can once again be online (but with pro I understand I can control all the updates) to activate numerous plugins I have accumulated the previous year. I do not trust doing that and receiving updates during that process until I have a functioning backup.

I got this Dell pc last Christmas after a Win 10 update took out all the working pcs in the house within a few hours of each other during an update (Fall Creators) and stopped all my work. I have never recovered that DAW pc, it now sits in my studio with a BSOD, it was functioning beautifully but never made it through the update. I have stayed offline since then with my new Dell.

robbyk333 said:

Yes sir, I have a recovery drive on DVD, all went well during that process with the VIM mounted, etc. It says the drive was successfully created. And I also have a disc image on a Western Digital external HD large enough to store two images.

We'll see how it goes today when I get to my studio (the Dell pc is my DAW), but so far I cannot get the Dell to boot to a DVD drive. It boots only to a NIC IPV4 or 6, whatever that is with F2.

Today I'll try F12. I'm really looking forward to confirming this, as my goal is to upgrade to Win 10 Pro so I can once again be online (but with pro I understand I can control all the updates) to activate numerous plugins I have accumulated the previous year. I do not trust doing that and receiving updates during that process until I have a functioning backup.

I got this Dell pc last Christmas after a Win 10 update took out all the working pcs in the house within a few hours of each other during an update (Fall Creators) and stopped all my work. I have never recovered that DAW pc, it now sits in my studio with a BSOD, it was functioning beautifully but never made it through the update. I have stayed offline since then with my new Dell.

You might have more success trying to boot from an USB recovery drive than a DVD. Sometimes you need to disable secure boot for the desired boot override drive to be visible in the BIOS screen. Also note booting from a DVD will be slow so give the disk a few minutes to boot,

Steve, that is very helpful, I may try that even if the DVD works, I didn't have a spare one lying around when I tried this, but I had a load of DVDS. I going to pick up some today, they are on sale for $4.99 at newegg, 32 GB I think. Also, I didn't see any options at all to do anything in the BIOS, a Dell YouTube suggests I have to create these options first via a command prompt but many are reporting this didn't work. One way or another, I really hope to get this done! Thanks so much for the continued help!

Bastet said:

I backup/image to an external hard drive but within MR you can choose to boot the image with VMi/HyperV although VM is on Windows 10 pro only, there’s also a browse image option, I would think if you can do this then the image is fine.
Usually MR states to test the boot USB - which you should create - so you can assure yourself you can access MR image if Windows cannot boot.

Thanks, but I'm on Win 10 home...