What is a Bare Metal Restore?

Bare metal restore refers to rebuilding a system from a bare metal state (without any OS) in the event of a catastrophe. This type of restore requires you to rebuild your entire system from scratch, including the operating system, software applications, files, settings and system preferences.

Done manually, this is a cumbersome process that requires a lot of man hours to complete. Typically this involves reinstalling the operating system, then reinstalling any software applications that are needed.

The difficult part here is that most people do not keep a backup copy of all of their software applications as many programs are downloaded from the internet these days. Just trying to find copies of all of the software and the corresponding keys could set you back an entire day. Next you would need to restore all of your files and settings, that is, if you created a backup.

Advantages of Creating a Disaster Recovery Image Backup

By using disk imaging or disaster recovery software, you can dramatically speed up this process by performing a full system image recovery. Instead of manually rebuilding your environment step by step, you simply restore from the disaster recovery image you previously created.

A disaster recovery image:

• Captures your entire operating system
• Includes all Windows system files and configuration settings
• Preserves your installed software applications
• Protects all of your data files and folders

When you restore from this image, your system is brought back to exactly the state it was in before the disaster occurred. Your applications, settings, and data are all recovered in one streamlined operation, so you can resume normal operations as if nothing had ever happened.

To protect yourself from having to go through the process of a manual bare metal restore of your system, you need to create an image backup of your entire system. Most backup software includes some type of image-based backup option, although you should verify this as some companies charge an additional fee for disaster recovery.

An image backup is essentially an exact copy or "Snapshot" of your entire system. This means that unlike a normal file-based backup, an image-based backup is capable of restoring an entire drive of information without any other software (i.e. no operating system) being previously installed on the system.

Full System Restore to Dissimilar Hardware

Backup software from NovaBACKUP includes powerful disaster recovery capabilities, allowing you to create a complete image of one machine and restore it to another machine—even when the target system uses dissimilar hardware, has different-sized partitions, or is a different brand of computer entirely.

In practice, this means you can migrate the entirety of your old machine to new hardware without having to worry about driver mismatches, disk layout changes, or vendor differences. Your operating system, applications, configurations, and data come over together as a single, consistent environment.

This flexibility is especially valuable when you are replacing failed hardware, upgrading aging workstations or servers, or standardizing on new platforms across multiple locations. Instead of rebuilding each system from square one, you simply deploy the image to the new device and get users back to work quickly, helping you reduce downtime and keep your RTOs and RPOs under control.

Rather than spending countless hours doing a manual restore, you can perform a full system restore in less than 30 minutes in many environments, depending on data size and network/storage performance. NovaBACKUP’s disaster recovery engine automates the heavy lifting, so IT administrators and MSP engineers can focus on higher-value work instead of repetitive rebuilds.

In addition, this backup and recovery software can mount disaster recovery images as drives, enabling you to browse them just like any other volume. This makes it easy to restore single files or folders from disk images without performing a full system recovery. Whether you need to recover an entire machine after a disaster or just retrieve a few lost documents, the same image backup gives you both granular and full-system restore options from one centralized solution.

This video walks you through how to create a disaster recovery image backup using NovaBACKUP.

If you need assistance or still have questions, talk to one of our backup experts. We're here to help!