Bare Metal Recovery is used when you want to restore an existing device's data to new hardware. No prior Operating System installation is necessary. The Bare Metal Recovery allows you to recover a device's full system state, applications and files and folders at the same time. The technology relies on a custom recovery distribution running from a bootable media (e.g. USB or disk).
The Bare Metal Recovery is a Windows only technology. It involves several different computers:
- The source computer – the backup device whose hardware has failed or requires replacement for some other reason
- The host computer – the hardware on which a bootable media is created for bare metal recovery purposes. The host computer can be the source computer
- The target computer – the hardware that you want to recover the source system to
Please carefully check the Bare metal recovery requirements and limitations before moving on to the Bare metal recovery instructions.
Alternative solutions
If the target computer does not meet the requirements or if you cannot allocate a separate computer for the recovery, please consider the following alternatives:
- Performing virtual disaster recovery. This feature is based on virtual disk creation and does not have any particular hardware requirements
- Installing the operating system on the target computer manually and then performing standard data recovery (any data sources except for the System State)
Critical Restore? We’re not the judge of when a recovery is especially time critical—you are.
Critical Restore is our partner-driven fast escalation process. Just let us know on your initial support call, email, or chat message that a specific recovery is especially time sensitive, and we’ll bring all hands on deck immediately to help you get your customer back up and running ASAP.
For more details please see the Critical Restore FAQ's.