What Is Bare Metal Restore? - What You Need to Know

Read this page when you would like to get familiar with the overall disaster recovery process you can perform with Backup for Workgroups.

What is Bare Metal Restore?

The term “Bare Metal” refers to a computer that does not contain an operating system. When you purchase a brand new hard drive, it is completely empty, in other words, it is nothing but "bare metal."  It does not have any files or even an operating system on it.

When you use the term "Bare Metal Restore," it refers to the process of restoring data to a "bare metal" component, like when you need to replace your hard drive.  The most common reasons for replacing a hard drive are because your drive either fails or becomes full and you want to upgrade to a larger drive.  Another situation that produces a bare drive is when you reformat your existing drive.  Sometimes computers become infected by a virus causing damage that is beyond repair, thus requiring the drive to be reformatted in order to get rid of the virus.

All of the above restoration situations end up with the same results: you have a blank hard drive and you need to restore your files to get back to where you were before you experienced the problem.

What is involved with a complete Bare Metal Disaster Recovery?

Backup for Workgroups has a Disaster Recovery feature that is designed to perform a bare metal restore for any Client computer.  This process will completely restore the entire server or desktop, even if you have to start from scratch and put a brand new, blank hard drive in or buy a new computer altogether.

The Backup for Workgroups Disaster Recovery feature is a "user-assisted" bare metal restore, which means that you are required to:

• Format the new hard drive
• Install a working copy of Windows, and any Service Packs (strongly recommended)
• Re-install the Backup for Workgroups Client software and use the same Client name and password that was assigned to the original Client computer

After these 3 tasks are complete, the computer can connect to the Backup Server and Backup for Workgroups can begin the process of restoring the hard drive (including the current Operating System) to the point it was at the time of the last backup.

Important note:  The Disaster Recovery feature is designed to restore a failed hard drive to a new hard drive as a comparable alternative.  It is not designed to be a data migration tool, nor can the Disaster Recovery perform a restore to radically different hardware setups.  For example:  you cannot restore a hard drive that was in a dual-Xeon processor server with RAID to a single-processor non-RAID hardware setup.  To many hardware differences will cause Windows to fail.  The Disaster Recovery was also not designed to migrate data from one Operating System to another.  For example:  you cannot perform a Disaster Recovery of a Windows 2003 Server to a new Windows 2008 Server.  The Operating System of the original computer and the target computer must match.

The time to format the drive and install Windows varies upon the speed of the processor, the speed of the hard drive, and the version of Windows you are installing.  Please keep in mind that you only have to install a very basic version of Windows, (because the Disaster Recovery process will replace it anyways), so you don’t have to install too much.  We recommend also installing any Service Packs that were on the original Client computer, since the majority of the Service Packs perform major changes to the operating system and registry.

Why doesn't Backup for Workgroups come with or create a Boot-CD or Rescue Disk?

We decided on the “user-assisted” route in order to keep the cost of Backup for Workgroups as low as possible.  If we include a copy of Windows with Backup for Workgroups in the form of a "Boot CD" or "Rescue Disk," we will need to license it from Microsoft, which would cause an increase in price. 

You can even generate a custom Disaster Recovery Report for each Client computer.  The report gives step-by-step instructions on how to proceed through the Disaster Recovery process, including how to format the new drive, what partitions were on the old drive, and other helpful information.

Tell me the things I need to have/do to perform a Disaster Recovery?

Here is a checklist of things you need when performing a complete disaster recovery with Backup for Workgroups:

• In order to completely recover all the contents of your computer, you need to have a complete backup of the contents of your computer.  This is why you need to make sure that Backup for Workgroups is backing up the entire contents of the Client computer's hard drive, including the Windows registry, operating system files, installed applications, data files, etc.  All of these files are required to perform a Disaster Recovery.
  
  The default backup set of "All Local Drives" will backup all of the above mentioned items.  If you have deleted or modified the "All Local Drives" backup set, you may not be able to use the Disaster Recovery feature.  This is why we recommend that you do not alter or delete the ALL LOCAL DRIVES backup set.
• The Client Name and Password that has been setup for the computer in question at the Backup Server.  You will need to know this information in order to "pull" the backup data out of this account and store it on the new media installed in the client computer that experienced equipment failure.
• New equipment to replace the failed equipment of the original client computer.
• Find your copy of the Windows Operating system used on the Client computer, including the product key/serial number.
• Download the Backup for Workgroups "bfwsetup.exe" file and install the Backup Client software on the new hard drive. 
• When the setup program asks for account information - make sure you use the same account information that was used for the original computer.  That means use the same Client Name and the same Password.  Use the handy "Test Login" button to ensure the connection to the Backup Server.
  (If you cannot recall the Client's password - which is quite common! - simply go to the Backup Server > Clients panel and use the "Modify" button to remove or change the Client's password to something you can synchronize with.)
• Print a copy of the Client Disaster Recovery Report (optional, but helpful)  Go to the Backup Server > Clients panel, highlight the Client name and press the "Generate Disaster Recovery Report" button.  Use the print button from the browser to print out a copy of the report for reference.
  
  Backup for Workgroups generates a disaster recovery report that is customized for each user.  The first section walks you through the process for formatting and partitioning your new hard drive, then it helps you install a temporary copy of Windows from your own operating system CD.  After helping you verify your network card settings, all you have to do is install Backup for Workgroups and choose the disaster recovery option.  Click here for a sample disaster recovery report