Glossary: bare-metal restore

bare-metal restore is the ability to restore a computer to its previous state without having to first install an operating system. If you have a hard disk failure, even if you have an exact backup image of the disk before it failed you can be looking at a lengthy restore process. The problem is, before you can run your data recovery software, it needs an operating system. That means you get to perform a complete installation of (for example) Windows from scratch before you can even start the process of restoring your disk image.

Bare-metal restore is the technique of avoiding this extra step by supplying a restoration program that requires no operating system. Typically, the backup package that offers bare-metal restore will supply you with (or let you create) a floppy or optical disc that you can boot from. That software will then let you start performing an image restore to a blank hard disk from your backup media. Once the image restore completes, you can reboot into what is hopefully a perfect replica of your last backup image.

Bare-metal restore (and, more generally, any image restore) usually assume that you are restoring to a hardware configuration that is identical to the one you made your backup from. If you just had a hard disk die, then that assumption is usually fulfilled; the only thing different about your system is that you've replaced the dead hard disk with a new one. But if your entire computer is gone (stolen laptop, desktop destroyed by fire, etc.), then trying to do an image restore to a completely different computer could get you in trouble. For example, the image backup might contain an operating system with installed drivers for mouse/keyboard/screen/whatever that simply won't work correctly with a different computer.

See Also:

• An affordable file-based backup package that offers bare-metal restore.