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My first introduction to virtual machines was when Microsoft in all it's glory tried to terminate Windows Xp. Well, that raised a $hit storm because so many other 3rd party products would not run under Windows 7. So, MS rolled out a canned VM that would allow you to run Xp. A few years later, I converted that to a VMWare Professional virtual machine. Why? Well, I write s/w for a living, I get paid for it, and VMWare should get paid as well. The price was reasonable, and none of this bull$hit annual licensing nonsense.
It has been rock solid. For 15+ years. It has its quirks, but overall as a development platform it's my goto. I tried openbox and a few others, and since time is money, nope back to VMWare. I mainly work off a laptop which maxes out at 64GB of ram. You have to be careful spinning up to many Windows OS VMs.
USB detection - solid. But you have to be careful. In my case, I have that Xp VM - it does not understand USB 3.0. Other than that, I've never had an issue.
As for VMWare licensing, Broadcomm is going after the corporate market (I feel the customer pain). I fully expect Broadcomm to push VMWorkstation to a subscription model (bye bye), and terminate VMplayer, but I'm a bit of a pessimist.
If you are leaning this way, grab a workstation license now and a player download. Broadcomm is gutting VMWare as I type this (the termination letters are going out). On the good side, there are going to be a lot of very experienced people with VMware on the job market. 
Charlie Gilley
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
Has never been more appropriate.
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well that makes things different.... and non-trival.
The company I contract with has transitioned to a pure VM environment - generic hardware and lots of VMs. I asked this question - "how do you know your backups are good?" I received a tutorial on all of the system software they use to make the world a perfect place. The backup king explained this that and the other, and it was clear he did not want me to ask the $10 question.
Are you sure?
It was layer upon layer and layer and some ice cream of software - at some point, you have to trust people to do their jobs. But, I am making copies of stuff and saving them off to my local machine. They simply have no validation system active to validate the backups... and I'm too tired to care. It's easier for me to agree and just make my own backup.
Charlie Gilley
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
Has never been more appropriate.
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Learn all rules, only then will you know which ones you can break  
M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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Heard more than 25 years ago: Backup your files, and backup your backups.
Am now retired, and so my personal backups are only on external hard drives. The most difficult task sometimes is the feeling that - "I've backed this up somewhere, but where, which drive, which folder, which subfolder?" Maybe some of you also face this issue.
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On most of my machines, I try to stay bare metal - the OS, VMWare Workstation and VMs. My backups are simply a copy of the VMs to a 1 or 2 TB USB-C drive. I really need to get back into the habit of putting one copy in the safety deposit box.
I also need to image the OS drive such that I don't have to rebuild the darn thing.
Charlie Gilley
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
Has never been more appropriate.
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charlieg wrote: I also need to image the OS drive such that I don't have to rebuild the darn thing.
Windows 10 and 11 are fighting hard against that... :S
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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truth. It use to be I could pop out my SSD, image it, and pop it back in. MS, in all its wisdom - sarcasm - will tend to invalidate your license for whatever reason they seem to choose. Oh, you changed your hard drive? You are hacking pirate... etc.
Microsoft is suffering from an over consumption of stupid pills.
Charlie Gilley
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
Has never been more appropriate.
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I think the biggest tell-tale is the MAC of the NIC. Supposedly, no two are the same (no manufacturer would ever copy, right?). When you boot up a copy of the VM, Vmware workstation will notice that the VM is not the same as before and ask if you have copied it or moved it. If you say moved, it keeps the same MAC. On the one hand, that keeps activation. OTOH, you can't run both copies of the VM at the same time because of the duplicate MACs.I have never moved one to a system with a different CPU (Intel versus AMD). If you say copied, you will probably get challenged to activate. This makes for an excellent backup, but not an extra "machine".
As always, "can't" is a relative thing.
>64
It’s weird being the same age as old people. Live every day like it is your last; one day, it will be.
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theoldfool wrote: If you say copied, you will probably get challenged to activate.
Not in my experience... But I use them mostly in the same PC where I have created them anyways.
M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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I have probably referred to it a few times before, but worth repeating: The Tao Of Backup[^]
For being 27 years old, it is surprisingly relevant even today.
Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.
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Every time I do a new image I let it do a check up and one out of max. three will be restored just after finishing to see that everything works.
M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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Excellent advice.
"A little time, a little trouble, your better day"
Badfinger
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Ubuntu. Deja-dup (works on top of rsync, keeps full and incremental backups...)
Set to back up laptops (user directories) to home server in the wee hours.
Most mornings I see a notification "Backup completed x hours ago"
Every couple of months instead I get a dialog box asking for my backup password. It then does a test restore/verify.
System is rebuildable; I have a script that records installed packages nightly.
Would be a bit of effort, but I've never had to do it over several OS releases and hardware iterations.
Software rusts. Simon Stephenson, ca 1994. So does this signature. me, 2012
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If you are running Ubuntu, you should be able to scrounge up a cheap machine and recover to bare metal.
That is the ultimate test of backups.
Charlie Gilley
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
Has never been more appropriate.
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Back when my laptops had 2.5" SATA spinning rust, used to swap 'em round all the time. external drive dock for cloning.
Mobo dies, pull the HDD and pitch the rest...
Still got a couple in the cupboard with reasonably current images.
Software rusts. Simon Stephenson, ca 1994. So does this signature. me, 2012
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When I tried buying Acronis backup software to replace Macrium Reflect. The Acronis rescue boot could not read a backup created with the same application. The application could not read the backup it had just created, except that the verify operation stated the backup was perfectly valid. Acronis tech support was less than helpful, and they refused to refund my money.
Back to Macrium Reflect I went.
Software Zen: delete this;
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I asked this question at work once ("when is the recovery plan tested?"), when they were banging on in a self satisfied way about the business "disaster recovery plan", contracted to a third party company. I got blank looks, as if I was mad.
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When it's a backup by EaseUS TODO backup.
It failed me several times and the backups are in a proprietary format.
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Also, when you only have one. Because two is one, and one is none.
Da Bomb
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Honestly, standard procedure for me, as I do it also always at least once a month at my clients. Have rotating backups (in past to DLT or DAT tape, nowadays external hard drives) Mo-Fr (or Sun in case of a vet clinic that operates 7 days a week), with a double Fr (or Sun) media, of which are rotated to be taken off-side (as even be best working backup isn't worse **** if all the backup media is kept in the same burning building (or collapsing high rise).
Do commonly a monthly restore test, at least one of the 5/7 media, on a different host, with a random folder selected, restored and SHA512 checked against the original.
A lot of clients at first think that this is all overkill. Until soft brown matter hits a fast rotating appliance and they can NOT get some data back because they didn't follow the backup procedure meticulously...
And disconnect any backup media (at least with an eject command, be it tape or USB mounting) as soon as it is done. This way, chances are minimal that you also lose your last backup when a ransomware virus strikes before you can be bothered to manually change media...
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Since the late '90s, I've had:
Hendrik's rules of computing:
1) Make a backup
2) Make *ANOTHER* backup
2b) at least one off provider
3) *CHECK* those backups.
horror stories of backups made, and then the DR/BCD site can't read the backup tapes (too old tech), or tar block sizes that wasn't standard/default/fixed, to scraping thesis of stiffies/floppies,
And then when/where I had the backups in place, restoring without a beat/sweat when things gone bad
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Wordle 986 3/6
⬛⬛🟨⬛🟨
🟨🟩⬛⬛🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
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Wordle 986 5/6
⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬜🟩🟩⬜⬜
⬜🟩🟩⬜🟩
⬜🟩🟩⬜🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
All green 💚.
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Wordle 986 3/6
⬜⬜⬜🟩⬜
⬜⬜🟩🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
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Wordle 986 3/6
⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬜🟩🟩🟩⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
symmetry!
Software rusts. Simon Stephenson, ca 1994. So does this signature. me, 2012
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