Here is another free video from IT Free Training. In the last video, I looked at how to backup
your computer system to protect you from data loss. This allows you to recover your documents,
but what happens if your hardware fails or your computer is lost or stolen?
In this video, I look at doing a full restore of Windows 7 onto different hardware. If your
hard disk fails, you can replace it but if your computer is lost or stolen then it is
unlikely the replacement computer will have the same hardware as the old computer.
When you restore a computer from a backup to different hardware, it is called a bare
metal restore. In the old days, if you restored your computer from a backup to a computer
with different hardware, it was a very risky procedure. The new computer could blue screen
or crash on boot. A lot of time was needed to troubleshoot the new computer to get it
to work, so often times a fresh install needed to be performed. A fresh install would mean
that all your applications would need to be installed again.
Windows 7 has improved the ability to perform a bare metal install. When you restore Windows
to different hardware, any changes to the hardware are detected and Windows attempts
to install a driver for that hardware. Hopefully Windows has a device driver for all the hardware
in the new computer. If no device driver can be found, the operating system should still
boot and allow you to install the missing device drivers.
I will now change to my Windows 7 computer to look at how to perform a full restore of
Windows 7 using Backup and Restore onto a computer with different hardware.
First of all I will open the control panel and select system and security and then select
backup and restore. In the last video, I went into a lot of detail about how to use backup
and restore. In this video, I will perform a quick backup to the network so I have a
backup to use to recover the system later. For more information about Backup and Restore
see the last video.
Select set up backup to start the backup wizard. Once the wizard has started, select the option
save on network. All I need to do now is enter in the share name and a username and password
that have access to this share.
On the next screen you can decide to let Windows determine the settings to use or choose your
own. In this case I will choose my own because I want to change one of the default values.
On the next screen I will leave it on the default values to back up the data files on
the system. At the bottom of the screen I will de-select the option “Include a system
image of drives.” You could include this in the backup but I have deselected it so
I can show you how to perform this step manually.
On the last screen I will save the settings and run the backup. This backup will only
backup the data files and does not include the system files. This means if the hard disk
were to crash on this computer, I would have to re-install the operating system from scratch.
Even though I have not included a system image in the backup, it will still take a long time
to run so I will pause the video and return shortly.
The backup of the data files is complete but does not include the system files. A system
image backup is quite large and takes a while to complete. On a system in which you do not
regularly install applications or make system changes, you may decide to manually run a
system image backup when one is required. Since I am backing up to the network, Windows
Backup and Restore can only support one system image at a time. In order to support more,
it requires some features of NTFS that are not available when connecting via the network.
If you were to have a locally connected hard disk formatted with NTFS, Backup and Restore
could support more backups giving you a backup history. Also, since the backup is not replaced
each time, performing a system image backup should run faster than running one to the
network.
To manually run a system backup, select the option at the top left create a system image
to launch the wizard. Like the backup wizard, I have the choice of where to store the backup.
In this case I will store the backup on the network. You could select the same network
location where the files and folder backup was stored. Both can be stored in the same
location without an issue.
The system image copies all files on the hard disk including system files and thus takes
a long time to complete, so once again I will pause the video and return shortly.
Once the system image has been created, Windows will ask if you want to create a system repair
disk. You can use this system repair disk to boot Windows and recover the operating
system. In this case I will not create a system repair disk so that I can show you how to
perform this step manually. If you have a Windows 7 setup DVD, you could also use this
to boot the system and recover the system.
To manually create a system repair disk, select the option on the left hand side create a
system repair disk. The system repair disk also contains tools that may help you recover
a Windows system that is having problems. For example, if the master boot record were
to become corrupt, you could use the system repair disk to create a new one. Since the
system repair disk will be used to boot the computer, it needs to be stored on an optic
disk. Remember that the repair disk is not tied to the backup in anyway, so you could
create one repair disk and use the system repair disk on many computers.
I will once again pause the video and return when the process is complete. Windows simply
asks that this disk be labelled and it is ready to go. I will remove the system repair
disk from this computer and switch it off to simulate an unrecoverable hard disk crash.
I will now start up another computer with different hardware with the system repair
disk that I just created in the DVD drive.
The system recovery disk will boot Windows PE, a small bootable version of Windows, and
auto launch the system recovery tool. Once I have selected my keyboard type, I will be
taken to the next screen of the wizard where I can choose to run the recovery tools or
restore Windows from a system image. I will leave it on the setting restore your computer
using a system image that you created earlier. Notice at the bottom the load drivers button.
If you need to load additional drivers to read your hard disk, like for Raid drives
or for network adapters, you can do this here.
Once I press next the local hard disks will be checked to see if there is a recovery image.
Since this is new hardware no recovery image will be found.
In this case I want to use the recovery image I saved on the network so I will cancel out
of here and then use the next option select a system image to choose the image on the
network.
Any system images that were found will be shown here including any images that are on
a connected optical drive. To select a network image, press the button advanced. This will
give me the option to select an image from the network. You also get the option to install
additional drivers if you need to in order to access the network.
Once I select the option search for a system image on the network I will be given a confirmation
dialog asking if I want to connect to the network. By default the network is not started
up for security reasons. Once the network has started I can enter in the share name
that is holding my system image and I will then be prompted for the username and password
for that share.
Once connected to the share I will be prompted for which system image I want to use. Once
I select the system image, I will be asked which image inside the system image I want
to use. System image files can contain multiple system images. The VHD file the system image
is stored in contains a single instance store. This means that when the same file is stored
multiple times in the same system image the other image can reference the one file rather
than making duplicates of the same file. In this case, more than one image is not supported
when the system image is saved to the network and thus I have only one and will only ever
have one image to choose from. If this image were saved to a local hard disk, it is possible
that multiple images would be listed here.
On the next screen of the wizard I have the option to exclude disks. In some cases you
may have a data disk that you do not wish to recover using the system image. In this
case I only have the one hard disk so I will cancel out of here.
If I select the advanced option, I will be given two options. The option “automatically
restart this computer after the restore is complete” will reboot the computer once
done. Since the restore takes a long time to complete it is a good idea to leave this
option on. This means that once the restore is complete, Windows will automatically start
and will detect the changed hardware and re-install the drivers. The next option “Automatically
check and update disk error information” will check the hard disk for errors. This
does increase the time the restore takes to complete but given that the restore does take
a long time to complete anyway I would leave this option on as it will not increase the
time the backup takes to complete by that much.
Once I leave this screen and press next I will move on to the final screen of the wizard.
Once I press finish I will be given a final dialog confirming that everything on the hard
disk will be erased and do I wish to proceed?
Once I press yes the system image will be copied over the network replacing everything
on the local hard disk. The process does take a long time to complete so I will pause the
video and return when the process is completed.
Once the system image has finished being copied to the hard disk, Windows will boot. During
this process Windows will scan for new hardware and install drivers for that hardware if it
has them. Because of this, the first boot may take longer than normal. When you first
login you may notice that Windows is still installing drivers and may ask for a reboot
to complete the process.
Once the system is booted and I have logged in, I like to check for missing drivers by
opening computer management. I do this by right clicking on my computer and selecting
manage. From here, select device manager and check for missing drives. Hopefully Windows
will install all the drivers that you need, but when changing hardware you can never be
too sure and it pays to check. You may also want to update the drivers to the latest version.
The manufacturer of your computer may have provided additional software and drivers that
need to be installed. This is particularly the case with laptops. It is a good idea to
check for additional software disks provided by the manufacturer and install this software.
A system image restore will restore all data and files on the computer, but there are also
other changes that were backed up since this system image was created. To restore those
files, open the control panel and select system and security and then select backup and restore.
To restore my users files, I will select the option at the bottom “restore all users
files.” From here I need to select which files to restore and from which backup. In
this case I will select browse for folders. I have only performed one backup so I can
select this backup and press add folder to add all the files and folders from that backup.
Once I press next I will be asked if I want to restore the files in the same location
or a different location. Since I am doing a complete PC restore I will leave it on the
default location and move on.
Since the files already exist from the system image backup, I will get a dialog asking me
if I want to over write existing files. In this case I do as this backup contains the
most recent data.
There are not too many files in this backup so the restore will not take too long. Once
the restore is complete, you will notice that some of the files could not be restored. If
I select the option view log files I can see which files were not restored.
Most of these files will not be restored because the file is already open and the backup software
could not over write the other file. One way to get around this is to login as another
user and perform the restore with that user.
That’s it for performing a system image recovery on different hardware. In the next
video I will look at some of the other options you can use to recover your computer system.
For example, let’s say you install a device driver that causes your system to blue screen.
Restoring the system from a system image will correct this but this is a drastic and time
consuming step. In the next video I will look at some faster ways to recover from problems
like this without having to restore the whole operating system. For the rest of this free
training series, please see our web page or YouTube channel. Thanks for watching.