Windows 7 recovery

Hi,

Does anyone know of any product that can backup a windows 7 box fully and have it restore to a dissimilar hardware PC. This is for disaster recovery purposes ( and legit! ) We are using a multi volume licence so wont be a problem licensing wise.

Microsoft dont seem to support this. Acronis, ghost and backup exec seem to have problems or are just unstable, but I cant be the only person who needs to do this?

Any help people I'd be most grateful.

Many thanks.

AAA

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Comments

jts1234

I know you said restore to hardware, but P2V would be the best fit...

You can try running sysprep first... but that comes with its own limitations.

Maybe combine the two: use one of the many image backup tools that work well with P2V and then, when disaster strikes, run sysprep on the VM, image it, and try restoring it to the other PC.

Hey, it might work...

Tom

demonfurbie

amyamandaallen wrote: »

Hi,

Does anyone know of any product that can backup a windows 7 box fully and have it restore to a dissimilar hardware PC. This is for disaster recovery purposes ( and legit! ) We are using a multi volume licence so wont be a problem licensing wise.

Microsoft dont seem to support this. Acronis, ghost and backup exec seem to have problems or are just unstable, but I cant be the only person who needs to do this?

Any help people I'd be most grateful.

Many thanks.

AAA

the best way ive found it is install the version of 7 on one system use windows backup to make a full recovery, it saves it as a vhd

mount that vhd in hyper-v and install drivers for all the new hardware then install that vhd using windows recovery on each system

thats what worked for me

Akaricloud

I'd just take a full backup using windows backup and restore.

Since it's just for disaster planning, in case of an event you can just mount the VHD, run sysprep on it and then restore it to any hardware through either a windows install or repair disk.

In my last position I had created a bunch of these universal backups this way so that we could deploy them onto any hardware in less than 5 minutes.

amyamandaallen

Akaricloud wrote: »

I'd just take a full backup using windows backup and restore.

Since it's just for disaster planning, in case of an event you can just mount the VHD, run sysprep on it and then restore it to any hardware through either a windows install or repair disk.

In my last position I had created a bunch of these universal backups this way so that we could deploy them onto any hardware in less than 5 minutes.

Thanks for all the replies. This is the one I would like to try.

I've made a win 7 backup onto a usb. Just not sure I understand how to mount a VHD? Am I just loading XPVM onto another PC or something. Be really grateful if you could explain the process in a bit more detail.

Many thnaks.

AAA

demonfurbie

amyamandaallen wrote: »

Thanks for all the replies. This is the one I would like to try.

I've made a win 7 backup onto a usb. Just not sure I understand how to mount a VHD? Am I just loading XPVM onto another PC or something. Be really grateful if you could explain the process in a bit more detail.

Many thnaks.

AAA

youd need a hyper-v server to mount the files

ive tried the vmware and converting the files but after you convert the file you cant restore it correctly