Images - Verification or Testing for Backup

Exactly.
Most people forget about back-ups at all, or only save one copy and then loose it.
Happens way to often.

 

I wanted to do a repeat test on a 2nd machine before posting about this.

Hate to shatter any illusions, but verifying an image is no guarantee of a restore. I stumbled across an obscure bug in Shadowprotect that brought this home. It's very obscure, there is a work around, and it has been reported.

Here's what I did.

1. I had received one of my desktop's back from service work, and they had done a clean windows install. When they install from scripts in production, the whole partition is formated, but in this case it was done from a Windows XP CD. Formatting this way windows leaves about 12-15MB unallocated/unformated. Well I wanted that 12MB back. Yeah I know, kind of silly.

2. So after I imaged and test restored the image, I restored again, but this time instead of creating an exact image, I used the use all unallocated space for the partition. The restore worked fine, and the system was fine. I started installing some programs, and then decided to do another image.

3. I created a new image, and verified it. The verification was fine, but that was it. SP was unable to create a partition if I deleted the volume, and if I didn't it generated an error saying there wasn't any unallocated space. The restore totally failed.

4. The work around, was using Acronis Disk Director to stretch the partition out to fill the disk. Once that was done, I reimaged and verified and restored.


All of this was done from the recoverery CD. As I said, it's obscure and there is a work around, but it illustrates that verification doesn't guarantee restore.

Pete

 

Yes. I only have Disk Director on Bartpe disks. Not installed.

True any software can have bugs. It only affects images created after the stretch install. When the test failed I had no trouble restoring the image before that. No doubt Storagecraft will nail it.

Pete

 

Hi Markymoo

Yep I know about the reason for the format approach, still I don't use Dynamic Disks, and just one of my things.

It's clearly a newly introduced bug, as I've used the same functionality before and not had a problem. They will nail it.

I think SP is equally reliable, and for me has functionality that Drive Snapshot can't match. I've done so many restores now I've lost count. Any software can develop a bug with a new version, or have an obscure bug that lurks until someone catches it.

The main point is though it shows that verification can be good and you may still have a problem you don't know about until you restore. That is the key issue here, and shouldn't be lost sight of, in trying to compare software.

Pete