Category: Drive Image / Restore a Drive Image Backup (system recovery) with Iperius
Starting from version 6.0, Iperius offers the possibility to create a recovery drive (USB or ISO file to burn) with the Iperius Recovery Environment® boot system, which allows you to boot a machine and restore a drive image backup created by Iperius (.VHD or .VHDX file).
It is therefore possible to perform a bare-metal recovery, a real disaster recovery even on different hardware, and to do this you do not need any Windows installation disc, but simply the Iperius recovery disk. To see how to create a recovery media, see the related tutorial.
See also: Backup drive image, disk cloning and P2V with Iperius
Once you’ve created the recovery drive, insert it into the machine to be started (the machine where you want to restore the backup). If necessary, select in the BIOS the correct boot priority to start the machine from the drive you’ve inserted. At this point, the machine will start up with Iperius Recovery Enviroment®, whose interface is shown in the images below.
So let’s see below the various steps to perform an image backup restore.
Now let’see how to restore our drive image backup in a few steps.
NB: A preliminary operation to execute before running Iperius Recovery Environment application, is to set our current keyboard layout, as the connected keyboard could not be correctly mapped inside the software.
To do this, just click on the keyboard icon in the bottom left corner e and select the layout of your keyboard (american layout is set by default: US), then click on the OK button to confirm (see picture below).
After having correctly set our keyboard layout, let’s start the recovery software by clicking on the Iperius Recovery Environment icon (see screenshot below):
1) Select the path of the drive image backup
After running the application, we have to select the path of our image backup. A Iperius Drive Image backup is made of one or more .vhdx or .vhd files (virtual hard disks) and a .idi (the configuration file necessary for restore). You must select the folder containing those files.
First of all, we have to select the kind of path where our backup is stored, choosing between two options (see picture below):
1a) Local Storage Path : a local path of the machine (hard disk, USB drive, o any devices mapped as letter unit);
1b) Network Storage Path: a network path reachable from the machine (NAS, shared folder, etc.);
1a) Local Storage Path
Let’s start from the local storage path.
After checking correctly the “Local Storage Path” option, just click on the “Broswe” button to open a treeview menu and find the folder where our backup is stored (see following screen).
To confirm, just click on the OK button highligthed on the picture above.
The path will be immediately scanned looking for .idi files: a positive message will be prompted in case one or more backup are found (see picture below, right side).
On the contrary, a warning message will be shown in case no backups are found (see picture below, left side).
In the first case, if one or more .idi file are found, we can move to the next window by clicking on the “Next” button.
1b) Network storage path
Now let’s see what to do in case our backup image is stored in a network path that is reachable from the machine we’re running Iperius Recovery Environment from.
First of all, let’s check the “Network Storage Path” option and then write in the text box below the path of the folder where our backup (.idi file + virtual hard disks) is stored (we can also use the “Browse” button to list devices that are connected to the same network).
Finally, let’s click on the “Search” button to run a scan of the path (see picture below).
As for the local storage path, at the end of the scan, a positive message will be prompted in case one or more backups are found, or a warning message in case of none backups found.
Only in the first case, though, “Next” button will be enabled allowing us to proceed to next phase.
Setting credentials for network storage path:
If the network storage path is protected by credentials, we have to check the option “Network path requires credentials” before proceeding with the scan of the path.
After clicking on the “Search” button, a new window will be opened: here we just have to insert credentials for the path (see picture below), and click OK to confirm.
Finally, after choosing either a local or a network storage path where at least one restorable backup is found, let’s click on the “Next” button to proceed.
2) Backup selection
In this window, all the previously detected backup are shown in a table (see screenshot below).
Every row of the table corresponds to a backup, each of them including key information (backup job name, backup time, computer name, included volumes and number of included disks).
To continue, we have just to select one backup and click on the “Next” button, as shown in the picture below:
3) Select restore mapping
Now let’s assign a fixed hard disk to each .vhdx or .vhd file (that is, the disks included in the backup) we want to restore.
For each virtual disk included in the backup, some information about it will be displayed to the user (path of the .vhdx or .vhd file, the included volumes it contains, size, presence of a Windows operative system).
At this point, let’s assign a fixed disk to the .vhdx file shown in the picture.
To do this, just click on the drop-down menu of the “Target Disk” box (see screenshot below) to display a list of the fixed hard disks connected to the system and choose the one where the .vhdx (or .vhd) file will be restored into.
Hard disks that are connected to the machine are listed using the following format:
Disk N [DiskName] (100 GB) DiskType
where:
– N means the number of the disk;
– disk name stays in square brackets;
– size stays in round brackets;
– at the end we find the disk type (USB, SAS, SCSI, etc.)
NB: The size of the selected fixed disk has to be greater or equal than the size of the disk to restore (the one written below the “Size” column).
NB2: If the fixed disk we want to select is a RAID or a device that requires a specific driver to be detected, you can load it by pressing the “Load Driver” button and then select the .inf file of the relative driver.
Once you finish to set up your restore mapping, you will just have to press “Next” button to proceed (see picture below).
4) Confirm restore settings
This windows consists of a brief summary of the restore mapping set up in the previous windows (see screenshot below).
If all has been set up correctly, just let’s click on the “Restore” button to start the restore process, or press the “Previous” button to go back to the previous window and correct the configuration.
After clicking on the “Restore” button a new window will be opened, warning you that the process will erase data on all the selected fixed disks : pressing “OK” the restore process will start (see picture below).
5) Running restore process
After clicking “OK” on the previous window, restore process will be launched: first of all the fixed disk will be cleaned, then the drive image file will be written (see screenshot below).
Once the restore completes, just click on the “Ok” button and then on the “Finish” button to exit from the restore process (see picture below).
6) Reboot of the system
In the main menu of the Iperius Recovery Environment let’s click on the “Shutdown/Reboot” icon and check the “Reboot” option.
Finally, just remove the device that Iperius Recovery Environment was started from (USB drive or CD-ROM) and click on the OK button to confirm (see picture below).
The machine will reboot and the system will restart from the same point where it was at the moment of the backup.
NB: For older operating systems (Windows 7 and Server 2008), in case you are performing the restore on different hardware, it’s recommended to boot in safe mode, install drivers of the new hardware and finally reboot the system normally, in order to avoid compatibility issues.