Bare Metal Restore

With Windows Server 2008 R2 you can perform a Bare Metal Restore of a server that has suffered a catastrophic failure. That’s right you can restore a server without having to install the OS and then the backup agent. You just simply boot from the Windows Server 2008 R2 DVD, but I am getting ahead of myself. Let’s take a look at the process a bit closer:

 

To start with you have to take the Bare Metal Restore (BMR) backup. And this is how you do it:

1. Begin by clicking on Start –> Administrative Tools –> Windows Server Backup**

 

** Note…You must have the “Windows Server Backup” Feature installed to see this option.

 

2. Wait for the Windows Server Backup to start up and then select the option “Backup Once…”

 

3. Once the Backup Once Wizard starts up select “Different options”

 

4. Click [Next]

 

5. Select the “Custom” option

 

6. Click [Next]

 

7. Click [Add Items]

 

8. Select the “Bare Metal Recovery” option

 

9. Click [OK]

 

10. Click [Next]

 

11. Select where you want to store the file. For me I selected “Local Drives”. Click [Next]

 

12. Choose the backup destination…then click [Next]

 

13. After that you will get to the Confirmation screen. Begin the backup by clicking on the [Backup] button

 

14. The backup starts.

 

15. You should see a screen like the following when the backup completes:

Now that the backup is complete your ready to begin the restore of the BMR. Now hold on to your hats everyone… we’re about to do the restore a server with out loading the operating system first.

To begin you will need to place the Windows Server 2008 R2 DVD into the computer.

1. Let the server boot from the Windows Server 2008 R2 DVD.

2. Select the options here that you want and then click Next. On the next screen choose the option “Repair your Computer”.

3. You can choose two options here. You can either use the recovery tools that can help fix problems, or you can restore the computer from a system image that you created earlier.

4. Once you choose the restore option and then click on [Next] the computer will search for the backup image. Mine is on the second hard disk in the server so it finds it rather quickly. If you have multiple images you can select the option to choose which one you want, then click [Next]

5. By clicking [Advanced…], you will see a window that allows you to control whether you want restart upon completion. It will also allow you to perform a hard disk scan to check and possibly repair errors. After you're done, select your options, and click [Next ]

6. All you have to do now is click [Finish]

7. You will get a warning about restoring the system…select [Yes] and we’re off.

8. And there you have it the computer is now being restored without having to load an operating system first.

Keith Hill
Support Escalation Engineer
Microsoft Enterprise Platforms Support

Comments

• Anonymous
  January 01, 2003
  addon : when inside the trashed windows, it also states that my windows is not genuine.when i created the full backup, my windows was activated legally.
• Anonymous
  January 01, 2003
  The comment has been removed
• Anonymous
  January 01, 2003
  addon : when inside the trashed windows, it also states that my windows is not genuine.when i created the full backup, my windows was activated legally.
• Anonymous
  January 01, 2003
  The comment has been removed
• Anonymous
  January 01, 2003
  hello,I did restore my full volume (perfectly) same procedure as above. but when the server (windows 2008 r2 dc" restarted, it does not complete the load and re-starts again. I booted in safe mode where  it got stuck after finishing disk.sys and classPNP.sys and restarted again.      I booted into DSRM mode and the driver of the hard disk installed automatically. i restarted windows but same issue keeps on restarting and stopping on classpnp.sysplease help!!!!!!!!!!!!!Any hint
• Anonymous
  May 26, 2011
  So just to be clear, if I pick the full system backup instead of choosing custom and adding the bare metal recovery, a bare metal recovery won't work? I hope that the bare metal recovery be part of a scheduled backup.
• Anonymous
  June 07, 2011
  Thanks Keith ,I am gonna try this on this weekend.Rajesh Parasa
• Anonymous
  June 07, 2011
  Can you have the BMR image on the network, or does it have to be on local disks?
• Anonymous
  June 14, 2011
  @Lonwa: you can have it on the network, that is not an issue.
• Anonymous
  June 16, 2011
  Good stuff.Does this method apply to cluster? How about compression?
• Anonymous
  June 23, 2011
  Can this backup be restored on multiple machines?
• Anonymous
  June 28, 2012
  Hi, I have a post with a question,How I must to proceed when the HDD of SO fails?, the answer is buy another  HDD ok? but how I can make a recovery (BMR) from the HDD where the backup is stored?(thinking that you machine have 2 HDD,  1 for SO and the other to store the backup).social.technet.microsoft.com/.../8cd2e74f-cf46-4bd1-8cc9-f74c52127705
• Anonymous
  July 18, 2012
  Thank you very much. I tried it but the restore process took about 6 houres for complete restore of 26 GB. I used it on a couple of dell servers powerEdge T110 II. Is this normal?
• Anonymous
  September 01, 2012
  Amazing how simple it can be to communicate with people and have them understand a certain topic, you made my day.
• Anonymous
  August 31, 2013
  The comment has been removed
• Anonymous
  November 17, 2013
  Help, I can do a bare metal recovery but it does not help becuase the hard disk is full and I need to recover to a new hard disk and the bare metal recovery formats the drive to the same as the original, quite stupid really.How can I change the partition size.
• Anonymous
  December 04, 2013
  How to restore BMR backup from network drive
• Anonymous
  March 23, 2014
  I attempted to utilize this to recover a failed array but 'Repair your computer' can never be chosen as we receive an error "This version of System Recovery Options is not compatible with the version of Windows you are trying to repair. Try using a recovery disc that is compatible with this version of Windows." There is no version of Windows!! This is a set of fresh drives! It's bare metal recovery!!! Can anyone advise me as to how everyone seems to get past this issue?
• Anonymous
  May 30, 2014
  @franklin , you're not usingthe correct version of windows to start the restore with.
  so eg. you're trying to restore a 2012 server image with a 2008 server boot cd.
  the versions need to match.
• Anonymous
  October 13, 2014
  Network BMR works perfectly on Windows Server 2008/2008R2/2012/2012R2. If you want more informations, I've successfully restored exchange server; domain controller; normal server with SMB sharing. Everything in proper state as it was backed up before.
• Anonymous
  February 26, 2015
  I tried this a few times getting and error because it couldnt see the raid/Vitual disk.
  
  So now im in the middle of using the dell ssbu and install windows 2008 r2
  
  Can i then reboot and try the recovery or is that not going to work?
  
• Anonymous
  April 29, 2015
  I have a good 2008 r2 x64 bare metal backup. I too ran into the failure when attempting to restore to a smaller drive. The restore succeeded when I restored to a same or larger size drive. However, it blue screens when it attempts to boot. I noticed that my backed up C: drive that contained the OS unexpectedly restored as an F: drive. Would this cause blue screen if the Registry has references to C: but the boot is F:. I know my app drives (D: and E:) that got different letters during the restore will not work with the drive letter re-arrangement. Is there a way to restore to get a 1-1 original restore on the drive letters? I have on my original server C: (OS), D: (App1), E: (App2), F: (App3), Y: (System Reserved).
  • Anonymous
    June 17, 2016
    take whatever is using drive c:\ and re-assign it to a free drive letter to free up c:\ then rename f:\ to c:\ in disk management
• Anonymous
  May 09, 2015
  Well this will not work for a core installation of server 2012. An easier way even if you don't have a core installation is to download the free version of Macrium Reflect. From reflect in windows (any windows computer) make a recovery ISO with windows PE 4.0. Its all built in you just click it it makes it for you.
  
  You can burn the ISO to CD/DVD or use rufus 1.47 to make a bootable USB stick. (only need a 4 GB stick.
  
  Boot the server with that USB stick. Then image the servers drive C. The destination can be partition on the server or a external USB drive or even a network drive.
  
  I find it much faster and easier than using microsoft backup.
  
  If you have a Dell server with a iDrac 6 card you can put that iso on the dell vFlash card and remotely boot to refect and do a bare metal backup of the server. No need to even be in the same building, its pretty cool.
  
  
• Anonymous
  May 21, 2015
  Keith,
  Great summary. I was doing a BMR on Server 2012 and couldn't find anything. I followed this and it worked perfectly! Since I was switching from a Raid 1 to a Raid 5 while adding an extra drive, all I had to do was extend the volume through server disk management after the restore was complete. Thanks much!
• Anonymous
  October 27, 2017
  i followed the steps exactly. when i hit step #7 i get the error "The system image restore failed". "No Disk that can be used for recovering the system disk can be found". the backup image is 88GB. the new C: drive is 127GB so there's plenty of space. i'm not excluding any drives. i have no idea why it won't restore.