On a W10 Professional C, I have been able to use viboot to mount OS images from this host C, but as well from Macrium Reflect images created on another W10 Basic C and also from W7 Cs with no problem (in the later cases viboot won't run on the host C, as HyperV is not available, so I am simply using viboot on the W10 Professional C with the images created on the alternate Cs).  So, I am VERY pleased with this development.  This puts Macrium Reflect way ahead in backup/restore software competition for me.  Therefore, I recently purchased a "four-pack" license due to your great work!!!

My interest in viboot is in making sure that OS backups will restore properly.  So, my only question regards the level of confidence in an image that is reasonable given a successful boot with viboot.. If an image boots and operates fine with viboot, can one be certain that it will work fine in a complete restore.  Any thoughts on this would be appreciated.

Thanks again for great software!

Thank you for your post and for your positive feedback.

Using viBoot to verify that a backup can be booted in a virtual environment is an excellent way to increase confidence that a physical restore will be successful. However, please be aware that the storage medium used for your backups could also be vulnerable to failure. For this reason, we recommend keeping redundant copies of essential backups on different media to mitigate this problem.

Kind Regards,
Jamie - Macrium Support

Kind Regards

Jamie

Macrium Development

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Thanks.

Of physical disk failure I am well aware and well protected; I keep redundant backups on different drives.  My question just regarded the degree to which I could trust that if an OS backup worked properly via viboot in a virtual environment, that it would also work on restoration to a physical hard drive, assuming there are no physical failures. 

Thanks again!

Hi 

Thanks for getting back.

The VM boot process is identical to a physical machine in that it uses the imaged file system(s) to boot Windows using the MBR or EFI system partition, execute the Windows partition boot sector code and finally load the Windows kernel.

A physical restore of the same image will lay down exactly the same sectors as viBoot is using, therefore, if a VM can load Windows then so can real hardware. If the hardware is different from the source then you may need to run 'ReDeploy', but the Imaged system is 100% capable of booting if it can boot in a VM. The only caveat is if you are restoring an EFI  system to a legacy MBR motherboard or vice versa.  In this case see here:

http://knowledgebase.macrium.com/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=1998887
http://knowledgebase.macrium.com/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=6426676

Kind Regards

Nick

Macrium Support

See our reviews on

Thanks so much for the comprehensive answer, and, most importantly for the great software!