Drive imaging backup for Disaster
Recovery and bare-metal restore
Uranium perfectly integrates itself with Windows Backup architecture, and allows to
make backup copies of the entire system drive, creating image files that can be
used to restore the complete system in case of disaster.
Requirement: this backup type is only
available on Windows Vista, Windows
Server 2008 and Windows 7 In order to have sufficient rights to perform this backup
type, it is necessary to run Uranium
as Administrator.
Now let's see below the simple steps to configure a drive image backup:
Creation of a new Backup Set:
In order to create a new Backup Set, if there aren't other Backup Sets created
previously, you have to click on the link shown in the image above, or on the
first button of the toolbar. Then, choose a name for the Backup Set and click
"Apply". If there are already other Backup Sets, you can create a new one
clicking on the "File" menu and then on "Create new Backup Set".
Adding an "Drive Image Backup" item:
In order to add a "Drive Image Backup" item you simply have to click
on the link shown in the image above.
In the Drive Image configuration window, select the disks of which you want to
create an image:
Then, you have to select a destination disk for the backup. You can also choose
a network folder as backup destination, and specify the authentication data to
access the network share:
In the final panel, you can see the option to keep more copies (that will be
overwritten in rotation, deleting at each backup the oldest ones) and the option "Copy
the backup folder in common destinations" : in this way, after the disc image
has been created, Uranium will copy the folder containing the image file in the
Common Destinations specified for the Backup Set (for example, to Tape or to NAS).
Click on "OK" to create the Drive Image backup item.
The item will be added to the list and
will appear like in the image below:
Now you can already run the Backup Set. Uranium will create in the destination
drive/network folder a directory named "WindowsImageBackup" (for the
bare metal restore, this name must not be changed), and inside this
directory, you will find some other important files and directory. There will be
a directory that has the computer name and, inside it, the directory containing
the image files (.VHD), that has a name composed by the word "Backup" and a
timestamp.
We can see an example of the directory structure in the image below:
Browsing and Restore files from VHD
images
The VHD file created by Uranium can be browsed as a common archive file, and you
can easily restore/extract single files from it, using the specific tools
integrated in Windows.
In Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, from the Computer Management console,
you can attach a VHD file and mount it as a common hard disk:
Finally, the VHD file can be also be mounted as a virtual machine using the
Hyper-V tools available on Windows Server 2008 R2/64.
The VHD file is an archive file, and therefore it can be opened like a common
zip file using for example one of the latest versions of 7zip.
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Disaster Recovery: how to restore your entire system from an image backup
(Bare metal restore):
In order to completely restore your system in case of disaster, you
simply need to boot your computer from the Windows installation CD/DVD.
On Windows Vista SP1 and Windows 7 is available a specific utility to create a
recovery disc, in case you don't have the Windows installation disc: recdisc.exe (see image).
Windows will
load installation files, then it starts as a common installation process:
First of all, we must choose some basic settings for language and keyboard
layout:
Then, in the next window, click on the link in the bottom-left corner: "Repair
your computer"
If there is a Windows installation on the computer, we could be prompted to select the operating
system we want to repair, as shown
in the image below:
In the next window, select the option "Windows Complete PC Restore":
It will be started the wizard to set all the necessary options to restore our
computer. The recovery tool automatically individuate the latest available
backup scanning the local hard drives, but if you want to specify manually
another backup location (another drive or a network folder), or if you want to
restore an older backup, you must select the option "Restore a different
backup":
In the window shown in the image below, you will be able to choose the location
of the backup you want to restore. You can have one or more disks in the list.
You must select one of them and click on the button "Next". If you want to
restore an image from a network folder, you must click on the button "Advanced" to
specify the network path and the authentication data if needed.
In the image below you can see the last window shown by the wizard before
proceeding with the restore. There are some other special options, like the
possibility to format and repartitionate the disk:
Clicking "Next" on this window, the restore process will start and the
destination disk will be overwritten with the image file, allowing in this way a
complete recovery of the entire system. After the recovery process, the computer
will be restarted automatically.
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For any question or technical information about this tutorial you can post a message
in the
support
forum.
This tutorial talks about:
- Disk Imaging software
-
Image backup for small business
- Disaster recovery software
- Bare metal restore
- VHD image backup file
- Drive image backup
- Disk image backup for Windows Vista, 7, Server 2008