True Image Won't Restore

IMO, booting the TI CD, creating the image and then validating it is a very good test almost as good as a test restore. Not quite, but very good since it shows the devices can be accessed written to and read from, with the data placed accurately in RAM and checksums re-calculated and all successfully compared. The creation and validation should also be completed in a reasonable amount of time. I'd say very roughly 0.5GB of compressed archive per minute with a modern PC would be a reasonable amount of time if the archive is on an internal or external USB drive. If it is taking a lot longer then there is likely a Linux driver issue.

If it were my PC, I would say it has been demonstrated the Linux environment works fine and I can now make images and do validations in Windows. I would do another test restore with the Windows created image to ensure there we no issues with the live-imaging. Rare, but not impossible.