True Image 2013 by Acronis Plus Pack: Restoring to Dissimilar Hardware with Acronis Universal Restore

With Acronis Universal Restore you can recover the image of your system to a machine with dissimilar hardware

This article applies to:

True Image 2013 by Acronis Plus Pack

If you are using an earlier version of Acronis True Image Home, see respective articles:

Acronis True Image Home 2012 Plus Pack: Restoring to Dissimilar Hardware with Acronis Universal Restore
Acronis True Image Home 2011 Plus Pack: Restoring to Dissimilar Hardware with Acronis Universal Restore
Restoring to Dissimilar Hardware with Acronis True Image Home 2010 Plus Pack

Introduction

Acronis Universal Restore is a module that allows changing Windows Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL.dll) and install mass storage boot device drivers into the system.

It installs boot device drivers (e.g. hard drive or RAID controller drivers) into the system during the recovery process, so that the operating system can boot from this boot device. If there are proper NIC drivers present in the folder with the drivers, Acronis Universal Restore will copy them into the restored system and will schedule their installation on Windows boot-up.All the other drivers (e.g. video and sound card drivers, plug and play drivers) are not installed by Acronis Universal Restore, as they can be installed in Windows after the successful migration.

Note for Windows XP users: as Microsoft has stopped Windows XP support on April 8, 2014, more and more hardware manufacturers discontinue testing their harware for compatibility with Windows XP, thus you may experience issues when/after restoring a Windows XP system to new hardware. Please consult your hardware manufacturer to make sure the new hardware is compatible with Windows XP.

Acronis Universal Restore is applicable for:

Instant recovery of a failed system on different hardware;
Migration to a machine with dissimilar hardware;
Real-to-virtual and virtual-to-real computer migration for system recovery, as well as testing and other purposes.

Solution

Before restoring an image of your operating system, please ensure the following:

You have Acronis Bootable Media with Acronis Universal Restore. If you do not, please Install True Image 2013 by Acronis Plus Pack. See True Image 2013 by Acronis: Installation of Acronis Plus Pack and True Image 2013 by Acronis: Creating Acronis Bootable Media;
You have created Acronis Bootable Media (standard, WinPE, or BartPE) after the installation of True Image 2013 by Acronis Plus Pack;
You have a backup of a supported operating system. See Acronis Universal Restore of True Image 2013 by Acronis Plus Pack: Supported Operating Systems;
You have mass storage drivers for the new computer. If you have a specific hard drive controller such as SAS, RAID or SCSI, you also need to download drivers for them. These drivers are critical for booting the operating system. You can download the drivers on the Vendor's web-site. Please note, if you downloaded the drivers in *.exe, *.cab, *.zip format, you should extract them first using a third-party application (e.g. free 7-zip or any other).. The driver files should have the *.inf, *.sys or *.oem extensions.
(!) Do not use Windows\System32\drivers folder as drivers source.

Restoring system backup with Acronis Universal Restore:

Boot from Acronis Bootable Media and select True Image:
On the True Image 2013 by Acronis home screen, select Recover -> My Disks:
Select the backup of your system partition that you would like to restore:

If the necessary backup does not appear in the list, press Browse to specify backup location and select the necessary backup.

(!) Acronis Universal Restore is not available for Nonstop Backup.
Select Recover whole disks and partitions and Use Acronis Universal Restore:
On the Drivers manager screen select where Acronis Universal Restore should look for the new drivers:

(!) Acronis Universal Restore patches the registry and installs the new drivers after the system is restored, so make sure the location with the drivers will still be available. For example, do not specify the search path for the drivers on the same disk to which you are restoring the backup. The recommendation is to have the drivers on a separate USB disk, or on a network share. It is also recommended to put the mass storage drivers in the same folder.
Select to restore the whole disk with the operating system (including MBR and Track 0):
The partition type should be Primary and Active:
Leave the Recover disk signature box unchecked if you are planning to keep both the old and the new hard disks in the machine. Enable the checkbox if you are planning to use only the new disk and would like to keep Windows Restore Points:
Review the Summary window and click Proceed to start the operation: