Recovering to different hardware

Using Acronis Universal Restore (provided by separately purchased Acronis True Image Home 2011 Plus Pack) will help you create a bootable system clone on different hardware. For more information see Acronis Universal Restore. Choose this option when recovering your system disk to a computer with a dissimilar processor, different motherboard or a different mass storage device than in the system you originally backed up. This may be useful, for example, after replacing a failed motherboard or when deciding to migrate the system from a desktop to a laptop. You can use Acronis Universal Restore for recovering your system disk both from tib and vhd files.

Acronis Universal Restore is unavailable when recovering the system partition from an Acronis Nonstop Backup.

Before proceeding with recovery, make sure you have drivers for the hard disk drive controller or chipset drivers for the new motherboard. These drivers are critical for booting the operating system. You can download the drivers for your motherboard on the Vendor’s web-site. Please note that if you downloaded the drivers in *.exe, *.cab, *.zip format, you should extract them first. The driver files should have *.inf, *.sys or *.oem extensions.

Recovering your system with the help of Acronis Universal Restore

  1. Select a backup containing your system partition in the My Backups area on the main screen.
  2. Click the Recover button on the backup’s box if the backup consists of a single version. When there are several backup versions, click Explore and recover. Select the backup version you want to recover on the Disks and partitions tab, and then click Recover.
  3. When the Disk Recovery window opens, select the system partition’s check box and choose the recovery destination.
  4. Select the Use Universal Restore check box. Then click Settings to open the Drivers manager window.
  5. If the target hardware has a specific mass storage controller (such as an SCSI, RAID, or Fibre Channel adapter) for the hard disk(s), specify where to find the driver(s) for the specific hardware. If the driver(s) is stored on a diskette or CD, select the Search removable media for device drivers box. If some drivers are stored on a local hard disk or a network share, click Add custom driver locations…. Then, browse to the driver(s) location. After you finish specifying the drivers locations, click OK.

    Acronis Universal Restore does not support search for drivers on FTP servers.

    In most cases, Acronis Universal Restore will use three sources for drivers:

    - the removable media;

    - the drivers storage location(s) specified at this step; and

    - the Windows default driver storage folders (in the image being recovered).

    The program will find the most suitable of all available drivers and install them into the recovered system.

  6. To start recovery, click the Recover button.
  7. When a warning appears that you need to reboot the computer to continue the operation, click Reboot to continue.

During recovery, the program may be unable to find some driver(s) in the specified sources and will display an error message(s). In this case, you can click Ignore to continue recovery or click Cancel to cancel the process and then try to find the required driver. You can then continue with the recovery process.

Acronis Universal Restore patches the registry and installs the new drivers after the system is recovered. Therefore, make sure that the driver location will still be available. For example, do not specify the search path for the drivers on the same disk to which you are recovering the backup. We recommend that you place the drivers on a separate USB hard disk, USB flash stick or on a network share.

After successfully recovering the system partition boot to the recovered Windows.

During the first booting, Windows will display numerous “Found new hardware” pop-up messages and will then ask you to reboot the computer.

If you use Acronis Universal Restore for recovering a backup of multiboot configuration with two or more editions of Windows, the most critical drivers will be replaced for all Windows installations.

Recovering your system with the help of Acronis Universal Restore under rescue media

In most cases it is preferable to use your bootable media for system recovery. The rescue media must include Acronis Universal Restore add-on. Therefore, you need to re-create bootable media after installing the Acronis True Image Home 2011 Plus Pack.

  1. Make your rescue media the first boot device in BIOS. See Arranging boot order in BIOS.
  2. Boot from the rescue media and select Acronis True Image Home 2011 (Full version).
  3. Click the My Disks link below Recover on the Welcome screen to start the Recovery Wizard. Then, choose the image of the system disk for recovery. Since drive letters in the standalone Acronis True Image Home 2011 may differ from the way Windows identifies drives, you may need to specify the path to the image file. Click Browse and select the disk and folder that stores the image.
  4. Choose Recover whole disks and partitions and select the Use Acronis Universal Restore check box.
  5. If the target hardware has a specific mass storage controller (such as an SCSI, RAID, or Fibre Channel adapter) for the hard disk(s), specify where to find the driver(s) for the specific hardware at the Drivers manager step. If the driver(s) is stored on a diskette or CD, select the Search removable media for device drivers box. If some drivers are stored on a local hard disk or a network share, select the Search for device drivers in the following locations box (when it is not selected by default). Specify the path to the driver(s) after clicking Add Search Path.

    When both boxes are selected at this step, Acronis Universal Restore will use three sources for drivers:

    - the removable media;

    - the drivers storage folder(s) specified at this step; and

    - the Windows default driver storage folders (in the image being recovered).

    The program will find the most suitable of all available drivers and install them into the recovered system.

  6. Select the system disk at the What to recover step. Then, specify the destination of the disk being recovered (new system disk). At this point the program checks whether the destination disk is free. If not, you will be prompted by the Conformation window stating that the destination d
    isk contains partitions, perhaps with useful data. To confirm deletion of the partitions, click OK.
  7. Carefully read the summary of operations at the Finish step. If you do not want to validate the backup, click Proceed. Otherwise click Options on the sidebar and select the Validate backup archive before recovery box before clicking Proceed.

If the capacities of the source (backed up) disk and the destination disk are different, the new disk space will be proportionally distributed between the recovered partitions.

After successfully recovering the system partition, exit Acronis True Image Home 2011. Enter the BIOS, make the system hard disk the first boot device, and boot to the recovered Windows.

Recovering to different hardware