Purpose of Acronis Universal Restore
Universal Restore is part of the Acronis True Image Home 2011 Plus Pack which must be purchased separately. Acronis True Image Home 2011 Plus Pack has its own license and is installed from its own setup file. You need to re-create bootable media in order to make the newly installed Universal Restore add-on operational in the bootable recovery environment.
A system disk image can be restored easily on the hardware where it was created or to identical hardware. However, if you change the motherboard or use another processor version, a likely possibility in case of hardware failure, the recovered system could fail to boot.
Trying to move the system to a new more powerful computer will usually produce the same result. This is because the new hardware is incompatible with critical drivers included in the image.
Microsoft System Preparation Tool (Sysprep) will not resolve this problem. Sysprep allows you to replace only Plug-and-Play device drivers (sound cards, network adapters, video cards etc.).
However, System Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) and mass storage device drivers must be identical on both the source and the target computers (see Microsoft Knowledge Base, articles 302577 and 216915).
Acronis Universal Restore technology provides an efficient solution for hardware-independent system restoration by replacing the crucial Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) and mass storage device drivers.
Acronis Universal Restore is applicable for:
- Instant recovery of a failed system on different hardware
- Hardware-independent cloning of operating systems