152 Copyright © Acronis International GmbH, 2002-2015
When performing a recovery to a machine that has a type of firmware that is different from the
firmware of the original machine, Acronis Backup:
Initializes the disk to which you are recovering the system volume either as an MBR disk or as a
GPT disk, depending on the new firmware.
Adjusts the Windows operating system so that it can start on the new firmware.
For details, including the list of Windows operating systems that can be adjusted this way, see
“Recovering volumes” (p. 152) and “Recovering disks” (p. 153) in this section.
Recommendations
Recover the entire system onto uninitialized disks.
When migrating to UEFI-based hardware, use Linux-based bootable media or WinPE-based
bootable media of versions later than 4.0. Earlier versions of WinPE and Acronis PXE Server do
not support UEFI.
Remember that BIOS does not allow using more than 2 TB of disk space.
Limitations
Transferring a Linux system between UEFI and BIOS is not supported.
Transferring a Windows system between UEFI and BIOS is not supported if a backup is stored in any
of these locations:
Acronis Cloud Storage
Tape device
Optical discs (CDs, DVDs, or Blu-ray discs)
When transferring a system between UEFI and BIOS is not supported, Acronis Backup initializes the
target disk with the same partitioning scheme as the original disk. No adjustment of the operating
system is performed. If the target machine supports both UEFI and BIOS, you need to enable the
boot mode corresponding to the original machine. Otherwise, the system will not boot.
5.3.1 Recovering volumes
Let's assume you backed up the system and boot volumes (or the entire machine) and want to
recover these volumes to a different platform. The ability of the recovered system to boot up
depends on the following factors:
Source operating system: is the OS convertible or non-convertible? Convertible operating
systems allow changing the boot mode from BIOS to UEFI and back.
64-bit versions of all Windows operating systems starting with Windows Vista x64 SP1 are
convertible.
64-bit versions of all Windows Server operating systems starting with Windows Server 2008
x64 SP1 are convertible.
All other operating systems are non-convertible.
Source and target disk partition style: MBR or GPT. System and boot volumes of BIOS platforms
use MBR disks. System and boot volumes of UEFI platforms use GPT disks.
When selecting not initialized target disk for recovery, this disk will be automatically initialized
either to GPT or to MBR depending on the original disk partitioning style, the current boot mode
(UEFI or BIOS) and the type of operating systems (convertible or non-convertible) that are
located on this volume.
