Restoring an image to a different computer is regarded by some as the Holy Grail of imaging. Reports of success are infrequent and really, how often would the average person need to attempt this procedure? Even so, we would like the option and it is available but not inexpensive.

Pleonasm brought our attention to Symantec Restore Anyware software.

Click here

It sounds exciting but I haven’t seen it discussed in any forum.

Acronis has released Acronis Universal Recovery (AUR) and this has been discussed in the True Image Forum. Most posts have been negative.

Click here

I don’t have either software but a friend has Acronis Universal Recovery and I was allowed to play. I tried to use dissimilar computers. In other words, what we had available. The host computer was a Dell Optiplex GX150 and the C: drive was imaged to an external HD using Acronis True Image, Ghost 9 and Drive Snapshot. The recipient computers were Dell Dimension L667r, Gateway computer (Pentium 4 1.3 MHz), and Dell Dimension XPS T450. We used a blank HD in each computer, partitioned with a primary and extended partition. The images were restored to the primary partition. A ReatogoXPE CD containing the relevant plugins was used for the imaging and restoring processes.

Using Acronis TI with AUR:  Success on all three computers. The computers booted to WinXP and then spent a few minutes with Found New Hardware messages popping out of the System Tray followed by Installing Drivers messages. No user intervention was needed until a reboot was requested. The result was perfect. All programs worked except those that had been installed in the D: drive of the Optiplex (naturally). Device Manager was free of errors except for one computer that had a Wireless NIC. Obviously needed a driver disc.

Using Ghost 9 and SnapShot on the Gateway: success as above.

Using Ghost 9, Acronis TI (without AUR) and Snapshot on the other two computers: Failure. After pressing the power button we saw the Dell logo followed by the familiar WinXP screen saying Windows Did Not Start Correctly….  Choosing Safe Mode, Last Configuration etc just took us back to the Dell logo.

I don’t know why the Gateway was so friendly to our images. I expected it to fail. The exciting finding was that Acronis TI with AUR worked on all computers, so the Holy Grail is in sight.

Brian, nice study and information about Acronis Universal Recovery.

It would be nice to have a comparison of AUR to the Symantec LiveState Recovery 6.0 product which appears to have the same restore capabilities.  Neither of these products are cheap naturally which is why Ghost 9 or Ghost 10 don't have those capabilities built in.  Also Acronis and LiveState target audience for those products are enterprises.

Symantec claims:

Flexible restoration options
(Restore Anyware Option)

• Dissimilar hardware restoration (including different storage controllers and hardware abstraction layers) reduces recovery times and saves significant hardware investments.

• Combines hot imaging with the ability to restore to different hardware platforms on the fly.

• Allows users to migrate their system to a new computer without requiring a new installation. This is useful for upgrading hardware and for repurposing systems to serve a different role.

• Convert system recovery images into VMWare virtual machines and vice versa, giving you greater flexibility in managing recovery environments. This capability also allows you to test patches, application installations, and the like in the virtual environment before applying them to live systems.

Easy remote recovery
(LightsOut Restore Option)

• Eliminates the need for in-person visits to perform a full bare metal recovery by booting the system from its out-of-band controller.

• Symantec Recovery Disk is placed on the system hard drive, eliminating the need to access it from the CD.

• Allows manual addition of drivers directly to the Symantec Recovery Disk files located in the boot volume subdirectory.

Brian

Very nice!


Quote:

I don’t know why the Gateway was so friendly to our images. I expected it to fail.

Have to assume that the hardware differences must not have created an incompatibility issue!

With the significant hardware changes--did any of this trigger a WPA (Windows Product Activation) event?  (Windows Product Activation (WPA) on Windows XP)

Brian, Symantec offers two techniques that might facilitate the transfer of a Ghost image from one PC to another.

Prepare the Source PC
…remove the hardware that you know may cause a problem from the Device Manager before creating the image.  As long as you remove the devices, shut down the computer, then create the image without restarting into Windows, the destination computers will automatically detect the appropriate hardware and install the appropriate drivers. … you will need the Windows installation CD so Windows can access its library of drivers.

Uninstall Conflicting Devices on the Destination PC
If the devices are not automatically detected by Windows and there appears to be a conflict, uninstall the conflicting devices and restart the computer.  Windows should now automatically detect the appropriate hardware.

Do these techniques increase the success rate of transferring a Ghost 9 image from one PC to another?

Source:  Ghost compatibility between computers that have different hardware

NightOwl wrote on Apr 26^th, 2006 at 9:36am:

With the significant hardware changes--did any of this trigger a WPA (Windows Product Activation) event?

No, but we weren't on the internet and the life span of each OS was only 5 to 10 minutes.

Pleonasm wrote on Apr 26^th, 2006 at 1:02pm:

Do these techniques increase the success rate of transferring a Ghost 9 image from one PC to another?

That will be a future project.

Brian, I think this has been discussed in previous threads, but instead of purchasing the enterprise versions of Acronis or Symantec, you can do a "poor man's" procedure when restoring an image to a different PC:

How to Move a Windows XP Installation to Different Hardware

Plus you may need:
How to Perform a Windows XP Repair Install

Next time you have one of those failed restores, let us know if this procedure helps (and avoids spending those extra $$$).

NightOwl wrote on Apr 26^th, 2006 at 9:36am:

With the significant hardware changes--did any of this trigger a WPA (Windows Product Activation) event?

I have a question.  Why are different people concerned about Windows Product Activation?  It seems to be discussed endlessly, and honestly I can't figure out why?  

I've had to replace hard drives and motherboards and whenever I was notified about product activation, I merely reactivated over the Internet, or called their toll free number.   About the only thing I had to say on the phone was "I replaced my hard drive"  or "My motherboard died".

The whole process took less than 10 minutes.

Am I missing something here?  What is the big deal?

Ghost4me


Quote:

Am I missing something here?  What is the big deal?

As you said--not so much a *big deal*!  But there is a lot of *mis-information* out there--so, my intention was more a *heads up* so folks know what to expect, and not be *surprised*.

This resource seems to cover the issue very well:  Windows Product Activation (WPA) on Windows XP

It says that if your last activation occurred greater that 120 days ago, then the re-activation will occur automatically via the web and no phone call should be required.

And it's interesting to see how the WPA works and what changes will possibly trigger a re-activation event--for those who make frequent changes--this info could be helpful.

The only *big deal* is that you have to read a 50 digit number to the Microsoft rep if you have to call--and then copy down and enter a 42 digit number to get the re-activation--now that's at least a *small deal* headache  ;) !

NightOwl wrote on Apr 26^th, 2006 at 6:47pm:

As you said--not so much a *big deal*!  But there is a lot of *mis-information* out there--so, my intention was more a *heads up* so folks know what to expect, and not be *surprised*.

NightOwl, I wasn't questioning your statement, but responding to exactly what you clarified, and I agree, -- that there is a lot of MIS-information out there.

I think when XP first came out everyone was afraid they would be stuck in the middle of the night with no way to re-activate.  That's a legitimate concern, but it hasn't turned out to be a problem.

I suppose the only others that are concerned would be someone who wants to install one license copy of XP (or one Ghost image) on 10 PC's.  Well, that is a problem, and anyone trying to pirate in this way should be concerned.

Assuming the old and new PC are in good working order, I have often wondered this:

Take the NEW PC, and install the same OS as is on the OLD PC (using the XP or W2K or whatever CD), and get the NEW PC in perfect working order, with all the latest Drivers etc.

COPY the INF sub-directory from the NEW PC to the OLD pc's INF folder (making a backup before doing so, of course).

NOW GHOST the OLD PC, and do a ghost restore to the new pc.

I would think this would work, but have not yet tried it.

What do yall think?

John. wrote on Apr 26^th, 2006 at 5:30pm:

Brian, I think this has been discussed in previous threads, but instead of purchasing the enterprise versions of Acronis or Symantec, you can do a "poor man's" procedure when restoring an image to a different PC: How to Move a Windows XP Installation to Different Hardware Plus you may need: How to Perform a Windows XP Repair Install Next time you have one of those failed restores, let us know if this procedure helps (and avoids spending those extra $$$).

John,

The first technique may work but at present I'm confining my interest to imaging solutions.

I was interested in the Repair Install technique however. I've just restored the Optiplex Ghost 9 image to the Dell T450. As before, it didn't boot. I performed a Repair Install and it worked perfectly. Indistinguishable from the Acronis Universal Restore result. It's more labour intensive than AUR but it doesn't cost money.

So we can save our money by not buying AUR. Thanks for reminding me of this technique.

The price of Acronis Universal Restore has fallen to $30. Symantec take note.

http://www.acronis.com/enterprise/products/

Brian wrote on May 20^th, 2006 at 3:43am:

The price of Acronis Universal Restore has fallen to $30. Symantec take note. http://www.acronis.com/enterprise/products/

Acronis workstationa nd univ restore ROCKS!!!  best 109 bucks Ive spent in a long time -- No waiting, no activation woes, FAST!  solid, cheap LOL the list goes on and the uni restore WORKS!!!  

mackey,

Under what situations did you use AUR? I note Acronis are backing away from their initial enthusiasm regarding this product. They now seem to define "different hardware" as the same computer with a different motherboard.

I restored an IMB t30  to a dell d410 :)

Well that's certainly "different hardware". I had a good experience too.

I was thrilled I dont know about this new pushback but it must have soemthign to do with non standard pc's  I dont and wont build my own, but I like knowing i dont have to spend days restoring .. and of course the direct back to same pc works great  allot less painful than ghost

interesting.

for a long time, conventional wisdom was > new computer = clean install.

seems this is no longer the case.

any caveats associated with this?

Rad wrote on Jun 29^th, 2006 at 7:11pm:

interesting. for a long time, conventional wisdom was > new computer = clean install. seems this is no longer the case. any caveats associated with this?

dont know really, it worked right out of the box so (lol) I cant be much help I just followed the manual and Nham! it worked..

From Acronis..


http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=136822

When you first boot after restoring the image there is a prolonged period of finding new hardware and installing drivers. All done without user intervention. Some devices will of course need further attention.

Nice link.

Like I said in the other thread, I still have my doubts.  I'll meddle with Acronis as I do have a copy, but as your insightful link to their customer support forum warrants, it's going to remain an issue of what hardware was present at the creation of an image, and the difference in the destination's hardware.  I would love to see an older HP imaged on to a Dell Dimension, that would make me pitch a friggin tent!  Thus resurecting my love for imaging and my thirst for knowledge of the sort.

But for now, excellent work guys.  I've learned alot, this is like my third day in the threads total and I've learned so much from everyone.

You guys rock!!!

I'm going to Cleveland for the weekend with my four year old daughter, they have a big science museum (for her) and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (for me....  and her too... I guess).

I'm going to check out Acronis right now.

John. wrote on Apr 26^th, 2006 at 6:59pm:

NightOwl, I wasn't questioning your statement, but responding to exactly what you clarified, and I agree, -- that there is a lot of MIS-information out there. I think when XP first came out everyone was afraid they would be stuck in the middle of the night with no way to re-activate.  That's a legitimate concern, but it hasn't turned out to be a problem. I suppose the only others that are concerned would be someone who wants to install one license copy of XP (or one Ghost image) on 10 PC's.  Well, that is a problem, and anyone trying to pirate in this way should be concerned.

The problem lies with those who are system admins.  We generally use one key for all of our installs.  Thats the way we like it, and thats how microsoft wants it.  We have x amount of licenses and can be audited to see if we are over that.  We have our own update servers, so we dont rely on the windows update etc.

But when we do a fresh install, with the disks we have, it does not require validation.   With a ghost image, when it sees the hardware change, all the sudden it wants to "activate" itself.  Like you said, this requires a phone call.  No big deal......unless you have 500 pcs to do.  The way microsoft does it, they recognize that you have that key and x amount of licenses, but they still shut off activation and make you call after a certain amount.  This is a pain in the ass.  So to me, if it throws a "wga event" its a problem.  With the right system prep, i can make it work fine though.

Tnelson


Quote:

With the right system prep, i can make it work fine though.

Okay--I got the *teaser*--but, it's good to share--I'll bite--What's the *right system prep*?

NightOwl wrote on Jun 29^th, 2006 at 10:34pm:

Tnelson Okay--I got the *teaser*--but, it's good to share--I'll bite--What's the *right system prep*?

Sorry was not meant as a teaser.   Uninstall ALL hardware you can.  You will need an XP disk for this, prefereably the one you used to install originally.  Then you sysprep it and then create the image.  Send the image to another machine and pop the CD in to pick up the driver library off the CD.  I will get into more extensive.  

Thats all i have right now, i will be working with it much more extensively the next 3 days, so i should be able to tell for sure the best way of doing this.  I am going to try all the different methods of prepping the system etc to see what the best method is.

Tnelson

I've read some and have heard it referenced fairly often, but *Sysprep* is somewhat of a mystery to me.

A step-by-step tutorial on its use would be very interesting and helpful--if you happen to have the time.


Quote:

Uninstall ALL hardware you can.  You will need an XP disk for this, prefereably the one you used to install originally.

WinXP uses the installation CD to uninstall hardware?--are you using *Device Mgr* to do this--I've not run across WinXP asking for the installation CD to uninstall hardware with Device Mgr.


Quote:

Send the image to another machine and pop the CD in to pick up the driver library off the CD.

At what point do you do that, and where are you putting the driver library?

My hand is up for a tutorial as well.

Ditto, mine is up as well.

I use a less legal method that works wonderful in seconds.  But at the risk of being called a [glb]pirate[/glb]..... not good if your worried about getting audited that's for d*mn sure.  

I've never had the problem with imaging and the WPA.dbl giving any message, then again I'm not a network administrator (only three computers on my network).

But I would like to hear the method discussed in the previous thread as well.

My method applies a patch which can be undone if necessary to the winlogon.

MadtKrandle wrote on Jun 29^th, 2006 at 9:12pm:

Nice link. Like I said in the other thread, I still have my doubts.  I'll meddle with Acronis as I do have a copy, but as your insightful link to their customer support forum warrants, it's going to remain an issue of what hardware was present at the creation of an image, and the difference in the destination's hardware.  I would love to see an older HP imaged on to a Dell Dimension, that would make me pitch a friggin tent!  Thus resurecting my love for imaging and my thirst for knowledge of the sort. But for now, excellent work guys.  I've learned alot, this is like my third day in the threads total and I've learned so much from everyone. You guys rock!!! I'm going to Cleveland for the weekend with my four year old daughter, they have a big science museum (for her) and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (for me....  and her too... I guess). I'm going to check out Acronis right now.

would you settle for an HP5300 to a Dell optiplex gx280?

mackey


Quote:

would you settle for an HP5300 to a Dell optiplex gx280?

Are you saying you *have done this* with the above systems--or you have those systems and could give it a try?

NightOwl wrote on Jun 30^th, 2006 at 8:33am:

mackey Are you saying you *have done this* with the above systems--or you have those systems and could give it a try?

I am gong to do it Monday :) I have the image of my HP 5300 and Monday I will drop that on the dell 280 -- Ill report back

Yeah, that'd be rad...  I'd like to see that.  I told you guys about what I did to my girlfriends Dell, I damn near got laughed at.  Had to restore the damn thing from an XP install all the way up.....    sucked, I was up half the night.

Sorry for jumping in again, but I'm on DVD #7 of making a ghost image of my kid brother's Sony VAIO.  The brat bought it in Korea (Army) for $650.  It seems to be a nice laptop but he's got so much crap on it and it's got Win XP without an actual CD just the recovery console.  Anyways, he's got the thing running wicked slow so I'm backing it up on DVD with Ghost 2003, then I'm putting the image from my HP Brio onto it and hoping for the best.  If all else fails, he can have his 7 DVD image restored, or I can put a clean install of XP Home SP2 on it.  But I'm hoping my image works cos it saves me hours of bullsh*t.  That's why I love Ghost.

I'll jump in later and let you guys know.  I'm also looking forward to the previous post's task and the outcome of that endeavor.

HP BRIO > SONY VAIO IMAGE RESTORATION IN GHOST 2003 from BOOTABLE CD

SUCCESS.....   NOT!!!!!

Not a chance in hell.  That screen that comes on and tells you to boot from windows, start in safe mode, with last working configuration etc.  is starting to give me nightmares.  Loops back to the beggining and that's where you're stuck.

I did a restore from a partition image and it all went to hell.  BUt here's something interesting, When I backed up the VAIO I did a disk image rather than a partition image.  NOw bear with me cos I'm no expert, but I would assume that would transfer both existing partitions on the hard drive (primary and recovery) to DVD.

So why is it then, that after sh*tcanning the system in general and subsequently having to restore the disk image priorly made with my tail between my legs did I get the message in Ghost "Norton Ghost needs to create a new image span, insert disc or select new drive"  I finally figured it was probably asking for all of my DVD's that had the image like it wanted to size them up, maybe like compression programs do when you span across multiple volumes.  But when I stuck all the DVD's in one by one it finally got to the last one and said it was looking for an additional consecutive file that didn't exist.

What's that all about?  At the bottom it said in the "what's happening right now" section "destination partion too small, some source data will not be transferred-----  HELLO, I just made the backup image from the same hard drive last night, Might have something to do with the two partitions-I don''t know.  

So, then I got worried and restarted the whole damn thing.  This time I did a restore partition from image and so far it's at about 40% and it's hard to type with my fingers crossed.

Why couldn't I restore a disk image from a disk image?
Restoring the partition image, I only restored the main bootable one (active, primary) with the OS on it, I didn't restore the recovery one yet and I might not after all.

I just don't get it, I feel like I'm meddling where I don't belong but it only makes me meddle even harder the next time because I guess that's just how I learn the best.

Any Ideas?

mackey wrote on Jun 30^th, 2006 at 9:27am:

I am gong to do it Monday :) I have the image of my HP 5300 and Monday I will drop that on the dell 280 -- Ill report back

Update!!  --  this went off without issue!  pretty much as the thread owner said with his tests.. I made the image of the HP5300 dropped it to an external usb drive, booted up the dell 280 with the acronis cd, restored the image, it went through about 4 reboots and -- I was up an running...

Now that is interesting!

I've been meaning to try acronis, the program I thought I had wasn't that, I think it was something that had the name acronis in it on an ISO I acquired, Maybe an image or something, or maybe that's where the ISO was created.  I think it was some disc utilities or something but not the Acronis program for imaging.  Looks like I'm going to have to look into it.

Thanks for the experiment.

MadtKrandle wrote on Jul 3^rd, 2006 at 9:51pm:

"... Anyways, he's got the thing running wicked slow so I'm backing it up on DVD with Ghost 2003, then I'm putting the image from my HP Brio onto it and hoping for the best..."

this would not work -- unless you have the new symantec -- restore anywhere or whatever they call it --

try the acronis it worked for me as advertised - maybe i just got lucky but Ill take it either way :)

note, i posted a link to this thread in the ghost guide, on the page where i discuss Restoring an Image, specifically,.. restoring an image to a different computer .. at the bottom of this page:

http://ghost.radified.com/ghost_3.htm

i always thot restoring an image to a new/different computer was taboo, but apparently, i was wrong.

Rad, on the same theme, I recommend that you also reference this thread in the Guide:

http://radified.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1136486359

Brian wrote on Jun 30^th, 2006 at 2:49am:

My hand is up for a tutorial as well.

My arm is getting tired.

Pleo,

I added a link in the guide to the thread you recommend. Good thread. Lots of great info:

http://ghost.radified.com/ghost_3.htm

Readers of this thread may also be interested in:  Universal Imaging Utility.

Readers of this thread will also be interested in Reply #9+ of Can Ghost do this (for sure)?.

I am new to this forum, and actually inexperienced with forums at all.
My question is this: I have often used Ghost (8) to image and then restore computers, but a recent attempt failed on more than one new disk. All the data were transfered (I checked that using my  BART boot disk, and TOTALCMD), but the new disk would not boot the computer. I suspected the image itself was corrupt, but the same result occurred using a different image. Any ideas what can be done? Thanks,
Martin

Martin,

Welcome. Were you using images created on the computer that you were restoring? Or were the images from a different computer?

Do you use Ghost 8 from DOS or BartPE?

^^More spam to delete. BTW is there any way to flag or mark a post as spam?