backing up multiple Windows installs on same system without extra client licenses

[x509]

My main system actually contains four extra Windows 10 installs - separate partitions which I access via multibooting.  (And I use EasyBCD to manage these partitions.)

Doing multi-booting, I can bring up any of these extra four partitions as an entirely separate Windows 10 environment, which is great for test purposes.  I would like to back up each of these partitions so i can do a Disaster Recovery on each of these partitions.  Can I install Retrospect Professional in each of these partitions to back up that partition?

[Scillonian]

Are you wanting to install the full Backup Server or Client on each one?

For the Client each installation would require its own license as they are in effect all unique installations.

For the full Backup Server you would need to check the license agreement to see whether Retrospect is licensed per physical machine or Windows installation.

On a more practical note I have my doubts as to whether Disaster Recovery would work well with your multiboot setup. I dosen't work for me on machines that dualboot with Linux because the Linux partition is not part of the backup but is where grub is which is needed to boot the restored machine. I solved the problem for my needs by periodically taking disk images using clonezilla which when a disk fails I first restore from then use Retrospect to bring the system up to date.

If you have a spare hard disk or three I would suggest doing some trial Disaster Recovery restores, see what's broken, then adjust your procedures accordingly.

[mbennett]

An easy way to evaluate this is to get on the Retrospect website and run the configurator.  There's no legitimate way I know of to share a single license across multiple installations of Windows.  But the VM issue throws a slight wrinkle in things, and it's been a while since I looked at the price list for that.  They might offer an option that would do what you want.

[DavidHertzberg]

54 minutes ago, mbennett said:

An easy way to evaluate this is to get on the Retrospect website and run the configurator.  There's no legitimate way I know of to share a single license across multiple installations of Windows.  But the VM issue throws a slight wrinkle in things, and it's been a while since I looked at the price list for that.  They might offer an option that would do what you want.

The head of Retrospect Tech Support said here "The VWMare add-on doesn't support current versions of VMWare and we are no longer selling this add-on unless someone absolutely needs to use it. This old add-on is discontinued." 

He then went on to say "If you would like Virtual Machine support, please look into purchasing Retrospect Virtual which is a complete solution for virtual environments."  Since I have no connection with Retrospect Inc. other than as a customer for Retrospect Mac, I have no idea how much the product he mentions (he once forbade me from mentioning it)—which won't run on a Mac—would cost for a single Windows machine.

[Scillonian]

Before we head too far down the VM route what x509 is talking about here are multiple physical installations of Windows in separate partitions on the same disk such that only one of them can be running at any one time. This is quite common among power users but rare among general users.

[x509]

On 5/17/2018 at 11:59 PM, Scillonian said:

Before we head too far down the VM route what x509 is talking about here are multiple physical installations of Windows in separate partitions on the same disk such that only one of them can be running at any one time. This is quite common among power users but rare among general users.

Thanks Scillonian,

I guess I am a "power user," but so far I have not done anything with VMs.  I do multi-booting instead, which I believe is more secure than VMs.  With a multi-boot installation test partition, I can remove the drive letters from all other partitions, so a particularly nasty bit of malware can't affect them.  Think ransomware embedded in some "trial" download.