Restoring question.
Are there any tutorials out there demonstrating how to assign drives and MBRs when restoring a server to dissimilar hardware?
Thanks.

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OK, but the issue I am having, and admittedly this is through a lack of knowledge - is what MBRs do I restore? All 4 drives? Or just the C: drive? on a Server 2008r2 machine there is a "System Reserved" drive.. It's all a bit confusing with multiple partitions.
When I am restoring single drive servers it's pretty straight forward.
Also, does booting the recovery media in UEFI or Legacy mode make a difference?
And another question. I see the recovery media has a Linux Shell I can use - is there any instructions on how to use this to delete all partitions on a drive from within the shell? Literally a step by step process written by experts for total idiots.
Thanks!
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Hi Mark,
In order to simplify the process I'd recommended to switch to Disks restore rather than to Volumes - this selection can be made when you browse for source archive for recovery (see screen shot with this selection in red circle). The goal is to restore disks 1 to 1, e.g. if your source system had 2 disks, then recover them in the same order to new system which should also have 2 disks.
The same approach is used for volumes recovery - if the target system is empty (all disks are unallocated) then the volumes will be pre-created in the wizard automatically (auto-mapped), so you may not change anything there. The volumes-based recovery is useful if you have more complicated scenarios, like mapping 4 source disks which have multiple volumes to 2 disks on the target system - in this case MBR item may not be restored at all - it will be updated automatically during restore.
Booting in UEFI or BIOS modes makes the difference - depending on it there will be restored OS adjustments made to make it bootable on UEFI/BIOS accordingly, so it's better to boot the bootable media in the same mode you plan to use this new system in.
The Linux shell in bootable media doesn't contain required tools to perform disk partitioning. For this purpose there is Disk Management tool available in bootable media. It will open Acronis Disk Director lite interface where you can delete the existing partitions from the disk and make new layouts.
P.S. If you have some specific difficulties with recovery, please attach some screen shots illustrating what you have, e.g. what you see in recovery wizard and what you see when mapping volumes/disks from the restored image to the existing disks in the target system. Basing on them I will be able to provide better guidance.
Thank you.
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Vasily wrote:For this purpose there is Disk Management tool available in bootable media. It will open Acronis Disk Director lite interface where you can delete the existing partitions from the disk and make new layouts.
Whoa! Where is that? I can't seem to find it. Sorry, it's been a long stressful week - thank god it's Friday eh?
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Hi Mark,
It's right on the very main screen of the bootable media menu: see screen shot1 + screen shot2. Note that you cannot resize partitions from there, but you can delete existing ones and create new partitions with required size. Plust you can even clone disks from via this tool.
Thank you.
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Your screen looks totally different to mine. When I boot from the "bootable media" disk I create from the downloads section of the Acronis 12 Management console I see this..
I bet you are all having a right laugh at me at Acronis HQ today :)
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Hi Mark,
Looks like I was missleading you (sorry for that) - the Disk Management functionality is present in bootable media of Acronis Backup 11.7 (including Advanced) and in Acronis Backup 12 _Advanced_ (which is in active Beta now) which I was looking at when taking the screen shots. So I took the media from Acronis Backup 12 Advanced instead of Acronis Backup 12 (currently released).
In Acronis Backup 12 indeed there is no such option - it will be added there in the next update which will come along with Acronis Backup 12 Advanced release pending for the end of May. That's quite a weird situation I understand - again sorry for confusion. If you want to check the Disk Management functionality - you can simply subscribe for Acronis Backup 12 Advanced Beta linked above and create the bootable media with it. Your existing backups created by Acronis Backup 12 can be restored via Acronis Backup 12 Advanced bootable media - there is backwards compatibility of course.
Thank you.
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YES! I thought I was going mad and was seriously debating posting this on the forum in case I was just being incredibly foolish!
Is there no way I can just get a link to the bootable media without signing up to the beta of A12B-A? Maybe send me a PM to a download link or similar?
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Hi Mark,
I've sent you a private message.
Thank you.
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