What is the best and easiest way to do a full test of the backup and restore process without doing it on your actual system?

I would like to take a backup that I have made of my system and put it on an external hard drive, replacement hard drive or something and test the full cycle of backup/restore/verify.  I have never done that and I don't want to do it the first time WHEN or IF it becomes necessary.  I would like to be comfortable that it will work without a hitch and that I know how to do it easily.

Believe me, I know how someone reacts in a panic.  I found that I could not even use a fire extinguisher when I actually had a fire.  I ended up shooting the thing at my foot, so I want to test this out fully when I am NOT in a panic.

Well how much free disk space you got? More than 2/3rds of your current system? Then you could install VMware Server (free to use), give a VM non-preallocated disk space of size as your current system plus 10 GB or so and then try to migrate an SP image into that VM with HIR and all that. If that works you can be certain it will work with real hardware, too. If your disk is already full you'd have to shell out some money to buy an external 500 GB USB2 disk for the VM and possibly later for SP storage.

That may be the best foolproof way short of putting in a clean HDD and restoring to it.

Nate has posted earlier that if it "verifies" OK, and you can mount the image and see all the files, you should be OK.

I'm trusting that, but so far, I've been lucky and haven't needed to do a system restore.

It's nice to know it's there if I need it.

 What I did was make sure I had another out just in case.   First restore was a gut check for sure.   I actually restore back to the drive every image I make.  500+ images later, I restore with about as much thought as opening a word doc.

 

Pete