bbarry wrote:
As usual, you comments make sense.........thanks.
Not sure if this is available with the boot media but may be... At least Acronis DOES have a validation option for checking an image but I believe that this only checks the structure of the backup to make sure that Acronis can read. I have never bothered with it. I feel safe in that, with my different destinations and two different backup software, something is bound to work. Then, on my main, I also do a bootable clone.
I use two backups, Acronis and Windows imaging, going to different destination drives and I feel more than covered. You add even another in Macrium so you have three different restore options. I guess, if you include my clone drive, we are equal with three different options. Don't worry about it.
Also I'm confident that you also have separate backups of your data such as documents and pictures. The very worst possibility is that none of the backups work which is fairly close to a null possibility and you do a clean install. Other than time what is really the big deal with this. Yes, it is a pain installing stuff again but, I think, it is really just the time it takes that bothers. As long as you have your data that is all that really matters. I don't anymore but I used to do a clean install about every 6 months just to clean things out. Quit doing that with either Windows 7 or 8.1, can't remember. The point is that, as long as your data is all there, even a clean install is not all that big of a deal... Not really any different than setting up a virtual machine.
BTW, When I say data backup I mean all of it. Remember that your email store is also data. I relocated my email store to my data drive. My data drive is clone/synced to three other systems and external storage. Favorites, cookies and such for your browser are also data. Only takes a moment to export such things in case later needed. Save the exports to a drive that gets backed up as data. Not doing little things like this end up causing a lot of the frustration involved with a clean install.