Solved Verifying Backup and Restore

Whatever your backup software is, do you verify your restores?

You could verify every backup you make by doing a full blown restore and fully testing the restore. This is very time consuming and perhaps nobody does it.

Going down in terms of level of verification effort, you could do spot checks, e.g. deleting a folder, restoring it from the backup, and inspecting the restored folder.

Going further down in terms of level of verification effort, is not really verification any more, but you could check the events/errors logs, and there is the issue whether you can trust the logs.

There is this anecdote about the IT director who could not restore his backups and was fired.

What do you do to prevent from being fired like that? What level of verification lets you sleep at night?

In my personal notebook I backup my system in a weekly basis, so as you said, veryfing thethe result image is time comsuming. But at job I would check the restore image. After all is the company data what I'm dealing with. It's my JOB. It's a whole different situation.

The software that I use has a verify backup feature. I would hope that crucial data is backup several different methods and located in multiple off-site locations. I guess nothing is absolute, but the often the backup is accomplished, the better the odds of not losing more than a day or two of data—just my $0.25 thought.

Macrium Reflect has a verify feature that will verify (whatever that really means) the backup so I just use that with each backup. The backups are running in the middle of the night so time isn't an issue.

Haydon said:

What level of verification lets you sleep at night?

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I have my Macrium backups set to verify the image immediately after backing up.

I could probably stop doing that, but it's become a habit. I've never yet seen any fail verification, or had any image that could not be restored.

The truth is veirifying backups dates back to days of backing up on dvds where writing was statistically prone to write errors.

Nowadays with modern hard drives, write errors are very rare.

I know people still do verify backups but I bet vast majority cannot remember last time a verification failed.

On that basis, I just keep last two or three backups, and never bother with verification as probability of all backups being corrupted is so low, you have more chance of a politician telling the truth.

OldMainframeGuy said:

Macrium Reflect has a verify feature that will verify (whatever that really means) the backup....

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Macrium said:

When the backup is created, an MD5 hash digest is created and stored in the index of the image file. When verification takes place, a new MD5 hash is calculated and then compared to the MD5 hash that is stored in the index. This ensures that the data contained within the image is the same as when it was written. Any differences between these hash values indicates that the image is corrupt, and the verification will fail.

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Haydon said:

You could verify every backup you make by doing a full blown restore and fully testing the restore. This is very time consuming and perhaps nobody does it.

Click to expand...

Macrium Reflect includes viBoot (even the Free version). This allows you to boot a Macrium image as a Hyper-V or VirtualBox VM. This is an alternative way to test that an image is viable, and takes just a few minutes to set up and boot to Windows.

I do three backups per week, and I verify each time. It only takes 2-3 mins longer, it's a good habit to have :)

I verified the Server (WSE2016) OS awhile back by restoring it in VMWare 11 from a SSD Server BU.
It took a few tries & I screenshotted it throughout the process but finally got it running.
So I suppose one can go that route to test their BU even though it's a pita.
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I suppose I could test a W10 BU from the server data BU in VMWare 11 also, there are a few to choose from.

Bree said:

Macrium Reflect includes viBoot (even the Free version). This allows you to boot a Macrium image as a Hyper-V or VirtualBox VM. This is an alternative way to test that an image is viable, and takes just a few minutes to set up and boot to Windows.

Click to expand...

How do I start out with viBoot? What is the first step?

Haydon said:

How do I start out with viBoot? What is the first step?

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Well, the very first step is to enable Hyper-V in Windows Features if you have Pro, or install VirtualBox if you have Home. Reflect v8 supports both, if you have v7 then it only supports Hyper-V.

Then it's simply a matter of running viBoot and selecting the .mrimg file you wish to boot as a VM. There's a Ten Forums tutorial for that:

Bree said:

Well, the very first step is to enable Hyper-V in Windows Features if you have Pro, or install VirtualBox if you have Home. Reflect v8 supports both, if you have v7 then it only supports Hyper-V.

Then it's simply a matter of running viBoot and selecting the .mrimg file you wish to boot as a VM. There's a Ten Forums tutorial for that:

Macrium viBoot - Create Virtual Machine using Macrium Image

How to Create Hyper-V Virtual Machine using Macrium Reflect System Image

www.tenforums.com

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that was easier than I feared

fear is man's worst inner demon

I had to install viBoot first because that wasn't part of the default MR installation, but now I can play with viBoot

Edit: If I count correctly, there are 4 ways to verify a MR backup
1. Actually restore the image and test the restore
2. By way of the MR 'Verify' button
3. Mount the image in File Explorer and test the mounted image
4. By way of viBoot and test the VM

... and you can check the 'Events' logs for errors.

Haydon said:

that was easier than I feared

Click to expand...

It really is that easy. If you then want the VM to have internet access you'll need to add a network adapter in the VM's settings, but that's not too difficult either. But you don't need internet access if you just want to verify that the image is a completely sound and bootable system.

Bree said:

It really is that easy. If you then want the VM to have internet access you'll need to add a network adapter in the VM's settings, but that's not too difficult either. But you don't need internet access if you just want to verify that the image is a completely sound and bootable system.

Click to expand...

I successfully tried internet access with the default switch :)

Still playing with 'Basic Session' and wondering about 'Enhanced Session', being concerned about violating licensing terms of paid for software, etc. etc.

Haydon said:

Still playing with 'Basic Session' and wondering about 'Enhanced Session', being concerned about violating licensing terms of paid for software, etc. etc.

Click to expand...

I generally only run my viBoot VMs for a few minutes/hours then delete the machine when I'm done. I have Reflect images of every version of Windows 10 from my test machine and it's useful to run them up occasionally to answer version-specific support questions.

For my more 'permanent' VMs I have activated them, some with a W7 key from a deceased PC. Note that if you ever activate a VM you should never just delete it else you'll throw away its digital licence.


In Hyper-V the Enhanced Session allows you to share the clipboard between the Host and the VM, allows the VM to use the Host's sound, and can give the VM direct access to any drive on the Host, internal or external. Enhanced Session is only available if the guest OS is Pro, a Home VM cannot use an Enhanced Session.

Bree said:

I generally only run my viBoot VMs for a few minutes/hours then delete the machine when I'm done. I have Reflect images of every version of Windows 10 from my test machine and it's useful to run them up occasionally to answer version-specific support questions.

For my more 'permanent' VMs I have activated them, some with a W7 key from a deceased PC. Note that if you ever activate a VM you should never just delete it else you'll throw away its digital licence.

Hyper-V - Preserve virtual machine digital license (activation) Tutorial

In case you want to activate your Windows virtual machines, it is important that you will preserve the activation and resulted digital license. When done correctly, you can delete the virtual machine when it is no longer needed, then restore it whenever required. You can even import it to...

www.elevenforum.com

In Hyper-V the Enhanced Session allows you to share the clipboard between the Host and the VM, allows the VM to use the Host's sound, and can give the VM direct access to any drive on the Host, internal or external. Enhanced Session is only available if the guest OS is Pro, a Home VM cannot use an Enhanced Session.

Turn On or Off Hyper-V Enhanced Session Mode in Windows 10

How to Turn On or Off Hyper-V Enhanced Session Mode in Windows 10

www.tenforums.com

Click to expand...

For the paid for software, I got in the VM a trial license that expires in zero days, LOL, as long as I don't use that too often too long, I am OK, I guess.

Of all the verification options, viBoot convinces me the most, as you can verify 'everything' (OS, apps, user data) in the VM

The VM even starts up with the MR dual boot option, which startled me the first time, LOL

I can confirm that the viBoot VM works in the particular BitLocker configuration that I use on my main machine. I can even do FTP from and to it, and that's enough for even sceptical me > everything in the viBoot VM works! The speed hit is also imperceptible for my modest computing needs, the software layer between metal and VM 'is not there'.
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Raising the bar for my other backup tools, robocopy holds its own, but File History has become a mixed bag for me. I used the batch file that @Bree posted in a parallel thread to reset File History, but it did not work. My biggest gripe is that File History sometimes fails to do the hourly backups without providing any notifications, and since it works in the background, I have no way of knowing about the skipped backups unless I check 'restore' or the 'events/errors logs' (in the snap-in console) On the other hand, File History has never failed to restore a backed up file/folder since the W8 days when it was introduced. (These are related but nonetheless somewhat different issues)
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I will mark this thread 'Solved' thanks to all who responded

I have Reflect set to verify the image :)

As I said earlier, the roots of verification date back to days when writing media were less reliable. If you think about it, now we do terabytes of writing to modern hard drives, and data loss is rare.

Far be it for me to advise that verification is not needed, but I would like to challenge users here when was the last time verification failed on modern hard drives. Even when I did do i6r, I cannot recollect a single instance on modern hard drives. For sure I used to get failures on bsckimg up to dvd drive (so last but one decade).

To me verification is more of a physcological activity, these days, predicated on historical use/experience.

Naturally, there is always a SODs law that will kick in i.e. because you failed to verify it, naturally, this is the one time the backup will be knackered LOL.