User guide

116 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000-2011
Original
system
Target hardware
BIOS
Disk: MBR
BIOS
Disk: GPT
UEFI
Disk: MBR
UEFI
Disk: GPT
UEFI
OS: non-
convertible
-
Solution
Recover the operating
system to a GPT disk.
2. Perform the
recovery under the
bootable media.
or
After recovery, turn on
the UEFI mode in BIOS.
Otherwise, the
operating system
cannot be booted.
Solution
Recover the operating
system to a GPT disk.
5.3.2 Recovering disks
Let's assume you backed up a whole disk (with all its volumes) and want to recover this disk to a
different target platform.
The ability of the recovered system to boot up in different modes depends on the operating systems
installed on the source disk. Operating systems can be convertible i.e. allow changing the boot mode
from BIOS to UEFI and back, or be non-convertible. For the list of convertible operating systems, see
Recovering volumes (p. 114).
 When a source disk contains one or more operating systems and all of them are convertible, the
boot mode can be automatically changed. Depending on the current boot mode, the target disk
may be initialized either to GPT or to MBR partitioning style.
 If at least one operating system on a source disk is non-convertible (or the source disk contains
any boot volumes of the non-convertible OSes), the boot mode cannot be changed automatically
and the software will initialize the target disk as the source one. To boot up the target machine,
you have to turn on/off the UEFI mode in BIOS manually. Otherwise, the system will not boot
after recovery.
The following table summarizes all cases of recovering disks of a BIOS-based system to UEFI-based
and vice versa.
 The plus (+) sign on a green background means that the source disk will be recovered without
any limitations.
 The plus (+) sign on a yellow background means that the source disk will be recovered with some
limitations. To overcome such limitations, you might need to perform some additional steps.
 The plus/minus (+/-) signs on a red background means the disk will be recovered, but some
issues might occur.
Original
system
Target hardware
Platform: BIOS
Target disk <2 TB
Platform: BIOS
Target disk >2 TB
Platform: UEFI
Target disk <2 TB
Platform: UEFI
Target disk >2 TB