Testing image backup

S

sharjohn

Registered
I have an iMac running lion on one of two internal hard drives. The other hard drive contains Windows 7. I am running Windows through bootcamp. I have successfully (I think) created an image of my Windows partition along with the system reserve partition. I am storing this image on an external hard drive.

I want to see how I can do the following:

Test the image without having to overwrite the original files on the Windows partition. I do not want to find out the image did not work after I have a problem.

Can I somehow boot the computer from the backup image? Can you boot the iMac from an external drive? The drive is firewire 800. Image was made with Macrium Reflect. I suppose the same questions could apply if I made an image of the two partitions using Windows 7 image tools.
 
Windows 7 doesn't clone like OS X. First thing to remember using Windows is to always KEEP the Windows 7 disk, no matter what!

Windows 7 has a User backup system built in. Use that with an external to save all the Windows 7 User Data. Then use the Windows 7 disk to do a fresh install (All Windows user should do a fresh install about once every year! This will keep all the built up crap that accumulates in windows. From Trojans, Viruses and other bad things that is constantly targeted at Windows.


Also is you are running Boot camp then bookmark the Apple site Apple - Boot Camp support.

Now IMHO bend Windows to Mac when using Boot Camp. Since Windows 7 wants NTFS and you want to use the same external then in windows consider getting Mac Drive. I use this in my windows 7 and it is truly stable and reads/writes now natively to all my HFS+ externals (I have 6 externals, for media, backup, etc.). I really think this is a worth while investment on the my Windows to backup to one of my externals. It does happily with zero problem.
 
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