Hello,

Couple questions if you dont mind. If I run verify image and all looks good, can I be reasonably sure that that image will be restorable? Or would booting the image with viBoot be a better option for verifying that an image will work if I need it?

I'm looking to be reasonably sure that taken images are restorable without spending a whole lot of time in the process. When it comes down to it, I suppose the only way to really be certain that an image is restorable, is to test it by restoring it to a machine and making sure all goes well. With one machine, this is do-able, but get more than a few machines and you could end up spending a lot of time physically verifying images. Verification of images with viBoot is a great options and will save some time but it does not appear to be automatable, or in other words, I cant boot an image into viBoot from the command line and test if it boots ok. There is the "verify image" option in Macrium, that verifies (and can fix in some cases) that the image is valid, but I'm not sure that is good enough to say,  yes, that image is restorable with a large degree of certainty.

For me, I would be really comfortable with an image if I could programmatically boot it with viBoot, query a process running in the viBoot'ed image, then shut down viBoot upon success or fail.

Am hoping to hear y'alls thoughts on the various options and how you go about verifying images.

Welcome!

I haven't dabbled with viBoot so I can't address that. 

There are different thoughts on the use of image verification.  Verifying the image ensures that it is readable and not corrupt. It does not verify against the original data source. Verifying after backup gives you a chance to correct a failure while you still have intact source data. Regarding verifying before restore, in my opinion, you should always verify before restoring to make sure the data is still readable. This is because the partition structure on the target disk is wiped out before the image is restored and if the image is corrupted, the restore may fail and your target disk is now useless. If the Verify is done before the restore and the Verify fails, the restore operation is aborted, leaving the target intact.

I have never had an issue restoring but I always verify before the process starts to make sure everything looks as good as it can.

A verification is a comprehensive test of data integrity since it checks the entire image to confirm that it is still fully readable and has not been altered since it was originally captured. A boot is not remotely close to that. Confirming that an image boots does not establish that every byte of data you have in the backup is intact.

However, a viBoot test would confirm that your image includes all partitions that would need to exist within the image to have a bootable result. It is absolutely possible to have an intact copy of a backup that does not contain all necessary partitions to allow an actual boot to occur. Some people for example only image their Windows partition (C drive), which on UEFI-based systems is insufficient on its own to allow a system to boot into the Windows environment it contains.