Trial Restoration Results ~ Acronis True Home 11

I had made a complete system image backup while in a RAID 5 System. When disaster struck I learned, belatedly that ATH 11 does not work with RAID 5 setups unless you take some special steps first so BEWARE of that.

I then spent 2 long days re-installing 50 some programs and I eliminated the RAID setup.

Because of this experience I wanted to be sure test that when disaster strikes again my system back up will work as planned.

I did a test and I was asked to post the results here:

STEPS taken ~ all from "wizards" in Acronis:
1- Execute complete system image backup
2- Validate backup
3- Create bootable disk media
4- Shut down (with bootable media in drive)
5- Reboot
6- Acronis will load
7 - Validated backup again
8- Restored to an empty internal drive (which I had named "Restored Disk Image"). The C: drive was named System Disk
9- Quit/escape Acronis
10- System boots up from there without further input

RESULTS:

All seems to have worked as planned:

1- Was told I needed to reboot for changes to take effect. I am not clear about the what change required this
2- The drive previously called Restored Disk Image (I:) was renamed System Disk (I: )
3- Opened Photoshop and Lightroom (both of which contain/use plug-ins).
a. Both worked perfectly
4- Compared the properties in Program Files and Windows folders. They were very close but not exact:

Programs Folder Original/ Restored
Size 7.57 /same
On Disk 7.68 /same
Files 52,382 /52,368
Folders 6,248 / same

Windows Folder Original /Restored
Size 16.3 /Same
On Disk 16.4 /same
Files 72,340 /72,313
Folders 14,431 /14,429

I am hoping that these differences were the result of simply booting up the hard drive or the fact that the there was a lag of a day between backup and restoration.

If anyone has thought on that please comment.

So I believe the test was successful and that I have greater confidence that I will avoid many hours of program installation effort next time my system crashes.