Macrium Reflect Set & Forget Question. How do I know it won't fail me?

frankma · 12 Nov 2017

Hello all. Maybe someone can ease my paranoia. Some months ago I had to start from scratch and reinstall everything to my PC because I (very stupidly, I'll admit) didn't have a back up.

Since that time, on a daily basis at 5:00am, I have Macrium set to automatically back up my system and thus far have never had to attempt a restore. I also have it verify the integrity of the back up.

My biggest fear is actually needing the back up and there's a problem. Meaning in spite of actually doing "what I was supposed to do" so to speak, I'm still screwed.

Short of intentionally doing a restore (which I would hope anyone would be loathe to do for obvious reasons, myself included) how do I truly "know" the back up isn't going to fail me when I really need it?

Thank you to anyone with any insights on this.

Sincerely,

Frank

RolandJS · 12 Nov 2017

Do you have a spare external hard-drive, or, a spare internal hard-drive? You can do a Restore onto one of those spares. And, even though Macrium Reflect program and its backup image you created operated perfectly, there can always be a monkey wrench of a different sort: sudden logical failure, an imminent physical failure, cable connection "corrosion", and so on.

RolandJS · 12 Nov 2017

I just now noticed something -- is your external hard-drive which receives your automatic backup always attached to your computer? If so, I hope your computer never gets ransomware, because ransomware ever hits, both the OS/Data hard-drive and the backup hard-drive will get hit.

cereberus · 12 Nov 2017

frankma said:

Hello all. Maybe someone can ease my paranoia. Some months ago I had to start from scratch and reinstall everything to my PC because I (very stupidly, I'll admit) didn't have a back up.

Since that time, on a daily basis at 5:00am, I have Macrium set to automatically back up my system and thus far have never had to attempt a restore. I also have it verify the integrity of the back up.

My biggest fear is actually needing the back up and there's a problem. Meaning in spite of actually doing "what I was supposed to do" so to speak, I'm still screwed.

Short of intentionally doing a restore (which I would hope anyone would be loathe to do for obvious reasons, myself included) how do I truly "know" the back up isn't going to fail me when I really need it?

Thank you to anyone with any insights on this.

Sincerely,

Frank

A great way to do this is to restore image to a virtual hard drive temporarily creating a dual boot pc. This assumes drive is less than 50% full if using OS drive to hold vhd.

If you use another drive to hold the vhd, it needs enough free space.

Once you have verified Macrium works, just delete vhd and remove boot entry.

Beauty of doing it this way, is you can do it all from Windows without even using boot drive.

frankma · 12 Nov 2017

Hmm I don't have enough space to restore on the drive being backed up, but I like the virtual external drive idea. I can borrow an external drive from a friend this week just for this purpose actually.

So if I restore to that drive and it boots and everything looks good I can have some peace of mind, correct?

I've never thought of ransomware ever, to be honest. I never got it in over 20 years of computing. Is there anything specific online one can do that could lead to it more often?

RolandJS · 12 Nov 2017

Ransomware is "big bad business" right now. You only have to be hit with it once to appreciate separate, un-attached, external backup drives. True, such is attached during backup or restore, however, like wearing seat belts, such increases your safety odds dramatically.

frankma · 12 Nov 2017

Well what are some behaviors online that are likely to catch it? All I do online is basic web surfing.

RolandJS · 13 Nov 2017

There are too many browser and non-browser ways to get hit with ransomware, over in bleepingcomputer.com, there are threads by Quietman7, as well as many in here, that can give you much information that will answer your very good question. I'm at school, meaning hit or miss conversations by me.

jimbo45 · 13 Nov 2017

frankma said:

Well what are some behaviors online that are likely to catch it? All I do online is basic web surfing.

@frankma

Hi there.

other sorts of ways to get ransomware is to open any email attachments that come from unknown sources - never fall into traps of opening attachments from things that look like Tax forms, Banks, other official bodies. You can be sure if you owe a bank or the tax authorities money they won't be sending you an email !!!!!!

Don't give out your personal details on to social media sites either -- especially passwords and email address.

For online shopping say at amazon etc have a couple of JUNK email addresses so any spam etc you get bombarded with after making an online purchase you can just delete without even reading it.

Don't have all the same passwords either --it's a pain but DO change them regularly.

The other irritant is this idea where everything is voice activated -- even call centres are getting in on the act.

I've even heard idiots at a busy Rail station in central London (St. Pancras) screaming their credit card number down the phone in "Top drill sergeant's voice" and giving out the 3 digit security code as well -- Idiots !!!!!

putting my phone on record I could have got at least 7 or 8 people's details while I was waiting in St.Pancras station to catch a Eurostar Train to Brussels.

Lucky I'm honest or I could have had a very nice FREE XMAS !!!!!.

Cheers
jimbo

Steve C · 15 Nov 2017

Post 4 is a good solution which I might try myself. Note you can mount your backup image as a virtual drive and peruse the contents to give you some confidence that the backup has worked and the archive is readable.