Validation

Hi,

I installed TI-11 today and have backed up my system. Can you tell me why or if I need to validate it.

Thank you,

baz. PS. I can be quite thick sometimes.

 

Validation is a way of checking that the Backup file is good. But it is not 100% a foolproof way to ensure that when you go to restore that Backup file that the restore will produce a booting system.

The 100% way to tell if your Backup file is good is to do an actual restore ... to a spare hard drive. There are a few of us here, including myself, who never do validations. But I do do actual restores.

 

It gives a level of confidence that the backup image is good and can be used to make a sucessful restore.
However until you have actually done a restore you will not know beyond all doubt that even a validated restore will work in your hour of need. There remains a small region of doubt.

I decided that to checkout my backups in complete safety the way to proceed was to do an actual restore to another hard drive having first withdrawn the original hard drive. After all this is exactly what one woud have to do if ones hard drive had physically failed.

To my mind this is an essential check. Once everthing has been proved to work I can sleep easy.

Xpilot

 

Thank you dwnndrty & xpilot for your replies.

I don't have a spare hard drive, except for the one 500GB external HD that my back up is on.

I deleted one of my picture folders, to the recycle bin, (which was backed up on my flash drive), and then tried to restore it using my acronis back up. It restored it no problem.

Do you think this is similar to what you both told me?

baz.

 

Not really good enough. I'm assuming you made a backup by creating an images rather than a Files and Folders backup. It is possible to extract a file from an image OK but find that you cannot restore the entire image to recreate a bootable volume.

The best way, as mentioned, is to restore to a spare HD. If you can't or don't want to restore to a spare HD then the next best thing to do is:

Make if necessary and boot up the TI rescue CD. This envionment is Linux, not Windows. This is one of the primary reasons untested backups fail on restore - an incompatibility with the hardware and the Linux drivers etc.

Find your archive and validate it using the boot CD. If this works then run through the restore wizard up to to final screen that asks you to click the Proceed button. Don't Proceed but cancel out at that point. The validation means the rescue environment can read the archive properly and recreate all the checksums.

Once you have done this test it is highly probable the restore should work but, as said before, nothing beats the actual test restore. If you can do rescue environment (Linux) validates OK then you can have faith that a Validate done under Windows is also a good indication the archive can be read properly.

 

Thanks seekforever,

I said I was a bit thick, but what is "the TI rescue CD.". Is it the original CD of acronis TI 11 Home which I purchased?

My system is Windows 2000 XP pro with SP2.

baz.

 

Hello barclayshearer,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

We are sorry for delayed response.

"TI rescue CD" usually refers to Acronis Bootable Rescue Media, which can be created using Media Builder component of Acronis True Image 11 Home installation. If you purchased a box version of the program, the CD included will also be bootable, however, it may not be the latest available build. Please make sure you use the latest build of Acronis True Image 11 Home. To get access to updates you should first register your software. Don't forget to recreate Acronis Bootable Rescue Media after updating. You can find detailed instructions in chapter 11 "Creating bootable media" of Acronis True Image 11 Home User's Guide.

We may recommend you to check this article for a list of released versions of Microsoft Windows.

Thank you.
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Marat Setdikov