Ability to restore multiple PCs

JonW, welcome to these user forums.

The simple answer to your question is Yes, this is possible and is included in the design of Acronis True Image to enable this type of recovery.

In practise, there are a number of questions that would need to be asked / answered about your source and potential target system(s).

For this type of restore to work, then Acronis Universal Restore would most likely be needed, unless the PC hardware involved is essentially identical and you are running with Windows 10 (on both source and target ideally).

Matching the disk controller type for the source and target systems is important, also matching the type of OS boot used, i.e. Legacy/MBR BIOS versus UEFI.

Your XP 32-bit system may present more of a challenge (due to XP rather than the process involved) and also your mirrored raid systems - these would need to present to the ATIH application as a single disk drive when booted from the Acronis bootable Rescue Media.  The Rescue Media and Universal Restore media would need to be created using the latest available build version (currently #6581) to provide the greatest degree of compatibility with newest devices, plus you would need to provide any specific chipset and disk controller device drivers that may be needed for the target system hardware for the version of Windows being restored via AUR.

Hi Steve

I have read that WinPE would be required on a USB memory stick bootable media but I am unsure which drivers would be required and for which PC the source or the target. Also, which drivers are required on the bootable media and which drivers are required on the Universal Restore disc?

Is it possible to create one WinPE bootable media with all the drivers to cover every possibility ie Win 7 32bit, Win 7 64bit & Win 10 or does it require separate bootable media for each?

Is it possible to create one Universal Restore with all the drivers to cover every possibility ie Win 7 32bit, Win 7 64bit & Win 10 or does it require separate for each?

I am unsure how to go about matching the type of OS boot used, i.e. Legacy/MBR BIOS versus UEFI.

The XP machine is of less importance than the other PCs. The PC hardware is very different in each PC.

I am new to this subject but I am a willing learner. Is there an article/ website where I could learn more?

Many thanks for your help.

Jon, with the latest ATIH 2016 build 6581 (and ATIH 2017) standard Rescue Media you should have support for most, if not all of your PC's hardware as there have been a lot of additional device support added for these builds.

Windows PE Rescue Media can also be used but will entail more work on your behalf as you will need to create this yourself on one of your systems - also the default WinPE media created by ATIH is 64-bit only.  The MVP's have recently posted a batch script program that will allow the creation of 32-bit Windows PE Rescue Media but this (like the default WinPE media) does not include any additional device drivers - these would need to be injected into the .WIM file for the WinPE media separately, which in turn means using USB memory sticks.  There are guides to doing this in the Best Practises Forum. The MVP's have also been looking at enhancing the batch script program to add the ability to inject additional drivers too but this has not been completed and made available yet.

With regards to which drivers may be needed - only those for the target system would be needed, and then only those that would be required to allow Windows to boot successfully, so chipset and disk controller device drivers in the main.  There should be no need to try to include every possible device driver in the Acronis Universal Restore media as most of these drivers would be 'found' via the normal Windows boot or update processes, or could be added later after windows has booted successfully.

I would suggest that you should build the AUR media to suit the specific system that you are attempting to migrate to new hardware - with using USB memory sticks, this becomes a lot easier to manage and you could put a folder on the stick with all potential drivers ordered by Windows OS and just point AUR to that folder if it prompts that additional drivers are required.

For the boot mode question - see webpage: Check if your PC uses UEFI or BIOS for details of how to determine this.  The key here is that the Acronis Rescue Media needs to be started in the same mode as was used by the Windows OS you will be restoring to the new hardware as otherwise you can end up with an unbootable system, and potentially one that gets converted from MBR to GPT.

Please browse through these forums for topics raised by other users for Universal Restore and these will provide you with additional information on some of the issues involved in this type of activity.

John, it just so happens we built a WinPE creator that let's you inject drivers on the fly (it's an upgrade to the link Steve provided earlier and now fully supports driver injection and works with 32-bit and 64-bit winpe creation).  You have to manually put the drivers in the correct folder first (x86 for 32 bit drivers or x64 for 64-bit drivers), but follow the prompts and it does the rest for you.  With this tool, you can inject drivers BEFORE the media is built so you can build .iso, .wim, burn to disc or create a USB flash drive and the drivers will be there when you're done.

Sticky: MVP Tool - CUSTOM ATI WINPE BUILDER

Just make sure to use the correct drivers for the version of the ADK yoiu are building the WinPE with (you must have Windows ADK installed first.  You don't ahve to use the same ADK version as your OS, you just need to have the correct ADK drivers for the version of the ADK you're building.  In most cases, using the Windows 10 ADK will give you the best "out of the box" driver compatibilty and versatility, but it's really up to you as to what ADK you install and use to build WinPE).

Many thanks for everybody's help.

I am working away for a while but I will let you know how I get on.