USB Bare Metal Restore: Getting Started
Prerequisites
Requirements for the target hardware:
• Must be able to boot from USB
• Must be on the same network as the Datto device
• Must be 64 bit hardware
Any OSs will be restored as a single partition. If you need a software RAID, you must restore the OS to a single partition and then configure the other Windows partitions as a software RAID.
You should have the following items available when starting this process:
• USB stick that is 4 GB or larger
• Any specialized drivers that you need to run your target hardware, such as trackpad, or hardware RAID drivers. They must be in 64-bit INF driver format, not EXE, ZIP, or other compressed or executable format. You may need 32-bit drivers later on in the process, so have those handy as well.
• If your backups are encrypted, then you will need to encryption passphrase for the protected system that you are restoring.
Imaging the USB Drive
1. Plug the USB stick into one of the open USB ports on the back of the Datto device. 2. From the web interface, click the Restore link at the top of the page.
Figure 1 - Restore Tab
3. Select the protected machine that you wish to restore. Then, click Bare Metal
Restore, and then click Start USB Imaging.
4. Select the USB drive that you want to image with the USB BMR environment. If you do not see the USB drive in the list, click the Refresh Drive List button, and then try again. If you still don't see the USB drive, plug the USB into another port of the device, wait about 15 seconds, and then refresh again.
Figure 3 - Choose a disk
5. Click Start Imaging. You will see the status as shown in Figure 4.
Figure 4 - Imaging Process
USB Bare Metal Restore: Booting the target
machine from USB
Prerequisites
This article assumes that you have already imaged a USB stick through the Datto device's Remote Web interface.
Procedure
On the target machine:
Plug the USB drive into the target machine. We recommend that you use the USB ports that are directly connected to the motherboard. Usually, this means using the USB ports on the back of the machine.
Boot into the BIOS or Motherboard Firmware (uEFI) settings. Set it so that the machine boots off of the USB drive. Then, proceed to reboot the machine off of the USB.
On EFI systems, you must temporarily disable EFI booting in order to boot off of the USB drive. The Datto USB BMR environment is not EFI-bootable.
When the target has finished booting, take note of the IP address at the bottom of the page, as shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1 - IP Address of Target Machine
From another machine on the same LAN:
From an SSH client, open a connection to the target machine's IP address. Log in with the username datto and password datto.
Open a Chrome or Firefox browser window to the target machine's IP address. You will see the page as shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2 - Bare Metal Restore Welcome screen
Click Get Started. You will see the window as shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3 - Device Selection
When prompted, log into the device.
Figure 4 - Device Login
You will then see the window as shown in Figure 5.
Figure 5 - Protected Machine ("Agent") Selection
Select the protected system that you want to restore from. Then, you will see a list of recovery points, as shown in Figure 6.
Select the healthy recovery point to restore to the target.
Figure 7 - Mount Failure Error
If you get the error as shown in Figure 7, follow these steps:
Via ssh, type sudo df -h
If you see a drive mounted to logSambaShare, enter the following commands:
sudo -i
umount /run/shm/logSambaShare/
Run df -h again to make sure that the share is not in the list.
In the browser, select the recovery point again.
When the process is successful, you will see the screen as shown in Figure 8.
Figure 8 - Partitioning
USB Bare Metal Restore: Advanced Partitioning
Getting started
At this point in the process, you should be looking at the window as shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1 - Advanced Partitioner
Figure 2 shows the Advanced Partitioner UI. See below for an explanation of the various options.
Figure 2 - Advanced Partitioner UI
A. sda is an example of a physical drive.
C. Once you've clicked on a physical drive, the partition table is shown in this section. You can click on the partition name to see details in the window below.
D. Click the Update button to save your changes along the way. This button does not commit the changes or delete any data.
E. The Delete button deletes the selected partition. You will be asked to confirm.
F. The Commit button commits the changes. Do not click this button until you are done editing your partitions.
G. The Reset All button reverts all changes back to the existing disk structure.
If you do not see your expected drive structure in this view, troubleshoot that before continuing with this process.
If all of your arrays and drives are showing up as expected, determine if you want to restore to the entire disk or restore just an OS or data partition. Then, proceed to the appropriate section below. If you are restoring both, start with the OS partition section, and then follow the procedure in the data partition section.
Setting up an OS partition
Your next steps depend on whether you want your target machine to use Master Boot Record or GUID Partitioning Table (GPT). The advantages of GPT include EFI booting and creating volumes over 2.2 TB in size. Make sure that you have hardware that supports EFI before you choose this option.
Setting up an MBR OS Partition
To set up an MBR OS partition, follow these steps:
Delete the existing OS partition and any existing system reserved partition, as shown in Figure 3.
Create only the OS partition in MBR format. Set the size to be 20% larger than the OS drive that you are restoring. Quick Format the partition as active/bootable, as shown in Figure 4.
Figure 4 - Creating an OS Partition
Click Add to continue. Then, set the Restore Volume to the volume you are restoring from.
If you need to create a data partition, go to the Setting up a data partition section below.
If you are done with partitioning, click Commit.
Then, proceed to the Data Transfer right away.
Setting up GPT OS partition
To set up a GPT OS partition, follow these steps:
Delete all partitions involved in the boot process. This includes the EFI system partition (512 MB), the MSR partition (128 MB), and the Windows partition.
On the physical drive that you want to use for the OS, set the partition scheme to GUID Partition
Table, as shown in Figure 5.
Create a primary GUID partition in EFI format with a FAT32 file system. The size must be exactly 512 MB. It can be tricky to set the size. Use the slider bar and the left and right arrow keys to get the exact partition size. See Figure 6.
Figure 6 - EFI Partition
Create a primary Microsoft Reserved (MSR) partition that is exactly 128 MB in size. See Figure 7.
Figure 7 - Microsoft Reserved Partition
Figure 8 - OS Partition
Click Add to add the partition. You will see the window as shown in Figure 9.
Figure 9 - Partition Scheme
Set the restore volume on the OS drive to the OS drive that you are restoring from.
If you need to create a separate data partition, go to the section Setting up a data partition.
Via the ssh client, run gdisk on the OS partition with the following command:
sudo gdisk /dev/sd[drive letter]
Then, press w and then enter to fix the protective MBR. Press Y then enter to confirm.
The output should look like this:
datto@DattoBMR:~$ sudo -i gdisk /dev/sda [sudo] password for datto:
GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 0.8.5
Partition table scan: MBR: protective BSD: not present APM: not present GPT: present
Found valid GPT with protective MBR; using GPT.
Command (? for help): w
Final checks complete. About to write GPT data. THIS WILL OVERWRITE EXISTING PARTITIONS!!
Do you want to proceed? (Y/N): Y
OK; writing new GUID partition table (GPT) to /dev/sda. The operation has completed successfully.
Then, proceed to the Data Transfer.
Setting up a data partition
To set up the data partition, follow these steps:
Delete the existing data partitions that you wish to overwrite, as shown in Figure 3.
Create the new partition scheme in MBR or GUID format, as desired. See Figure 4.
Figure 4 - Setting the Partition Scheme
Figure 5 - Adding a data partition
Click the Update button to apply the partition changes, and then click the Commit button.
If you want to set up another data partition, repeat the steps in this section.
If you are done with partitioning, click Commit.
Then, press w and then enter to fix the protective MBR. Press Y then enter to confirm.
The output should look like this:
datto@DattoBMR:~$ sudo -i gdisk /dev/sda [sudo] password for datto:
GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 0.8.5
Partition table scan: MBR: protective BSD: not present APM: not present GPT: present
Found valid GPT with protective MBR; using GPT.
Command (? for help): w
Final checks complete. About to write GPT data. THIS WILL OVERWRITE EXISTING PARTITIONS!!
Do you want to proceed? (Y/N): Y
OK; writing new GUID partition table (GPT) to /dev/sda. The operation has completed successfully.
USB Bare Metal Restore: Data Transfer
Procedure
The first step is to verify how the data will be transferred. Then, click Begin Transfer. See Figure 1.
Figure 1 - Begin Transfer
The process will take a while, depending on how much data you are moving. During this process, you will see the status as shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2 - Transfer Process
When the transfer is complete, you will get the Finalize screen as shown in Figure 3.
If any of the partitions you are restoring contains the OS, check in the box for Attempt to Restore
Bootability.
If you have drivers to slipstream into this process, click the Add Drivers button. You will see the options shown in Figure 4.
Figure 4 - Adding drivers from removable media or network share
When you are done adding drivers, remove all bootable media from the target machine, including USB drives and CDs.
Then, click the Reboot Now button.
If the OS restored to a partition that is smaller than the source data, you will need to run chkdsk on the OS partition. If this does not automatically happen upon reboot, then boot off of a Windows CD or USB drive and run chkdsk on the OS partition. Then, restart the machine into the BIOS or Motherboard Firmware, as described in the Reboot section.
Reboot
When you restart the target machine, boot into the BIOS (for MBR) or Motherboard Firmware (for uEFI).
Reset the BIOS or Motherboard Firmware settings to boot using the disk that contains the OS.
Then, reboot the machine again.
