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System restore of computers

  • Updated

Information included in the article

Requirements for bare-metal restore

The following are the requirements for performing a bare-metal restore:

  1. USB drive with a minimum of 4 GB storage — to create USB recovery media.
  2. Ensure the drives on your target computer are healthy (run SMART checks on the drives if necessary).
  3. The target computer must be bootable from a USB storage device.
  4. The IDrive BMR device and the target computer should be within the same LAN.
  5. The target computer should have a wired network connection to the LAN (DHCP is recommended).
  6. If the target computer has hardware RAID, it should be configured before initiating the restore process.
  7. For optimal performance during bare-metal restore, stop any ongoing backup operation.

Note: 

  • After restoring a machine, Windows may prompt you to reactivate the license.
  • Bare-metal recovery of dynamic (simple, mirrored, spanned, striped), logical, and Microsoft storage space (Raid-5 with resiliency type-parity) is supported by version 8.4.0 and above. However, bare-metal recovery of dynamic OS disk with GPT partition is not supported.
  • In the case you have upgraded to version 8.4.0 or above, make sure to install the latest backup agent that supports the aforementioned advanced backup and perform at least one image backup. If you attempt restoring exclusively from older versions where the OS disk is dynamic, you may face OS boot issues. Similarly, use the updated WinRE Recovery Media Builder to create and upload a new WinRE recovery media to the IDrive BMR device.

Perform system-level restore of computers 

With IDrive BMR, you can restore your entire computer including the OS applications and data, provided that the target machine is on the same network as your IDrive BMR device. You can run multiple system restores at the same time.

IDrive BMR allows you to restore data to your system connected to the IDrive BMR device with the help of WinRE recovery media. Before initiating the restoration process, you need to create a  bootable CD/USB with the help of the WinRE recovery media builder.

All you have to do is to boot the computers with the bootable WinRE media (CDs/USBs) and perform the restore operation. Data can be accessed directly from the IDrive BMR device during the restoration process.

Prerequisite: Create a bootable USB or CD using the IDrive BMR Recovery Media Builder.
View the instructions to build the recovery media

To initiate restore,

  1. Connect to the IDrive BMR device.
    • With the Auto-detect IP Address option (recommended), you can connect automatically to any available device within the network.
    • With the Specific IP Address option, you can connect to a particular device. This is useful when you want to connect to a specific device in a network having multiple IDrive BMR devices installed.
  2. Sign in to the IDrive BMR device with your user credentials.
  3. Choose the system and recovery point from the respective dropdown.
  4. Choose the appropriate volume option and click Next.


    Note    : If you click the Back button on this page, you will be logged out and required to sign in to the device again.

  5. Select a destination drive.

    Note: 

    • Once the restore process is initiated, any previously existing data on the chosen destination drive will be deleted.
    • Select a drive with equal or greater storage than the original machine.

     

  6. You will receive a confirmation message when the restore is completed.      

Perform bare-metal restore to dissimilar hardware

It is recommended to have the same hardware configuration on the target computer to avoid boot issues occurring due to incompatible drivers. However, if the target computer has a different hardware configuration, ensure,

  1. The motherboard chipset type (AMD/Intel) is the same in both the backup and target computer.
  2. The hard drive storage controller (IDE/SATA) is the same in both the backup and the target computer.
  3. The display adapter (graphics card) is of a similar make.

Note: Restoration issues due to hardware dissimilarity are found to be lesser in modern Windows operating systems such as Windows 8.1 and above. 

Force stop bare-metal restore

You can force stop/cancel bare-metal restore after it has been initiated, but it is not recommended. On canceling the restoration process, you will lose all the progress and your system might become unbootable. Furthermore, you cannot cancel any ongoing restore for individual volumes or disks during the restoration process.

When you cancel the WinRE restore after initiating it, you will receive the following warning:

 

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