Cross-Hardware
Your backup boots on the hardware you have today.
Three tiers — same-hardware (instant), different-hardware via offline DISM driver injection (USB Recovery), cloud-injection via bastion (Cloud Desktop). Acronis Universal Restore costs extra. We don’t charge for it.
Three tiers
From bit-for-bit to bare-metal-different.
Same hardware is instant. Different hardware needs drivers. The cloud needs AWS-specific drivers. We handle all three.
Same hardware = instant restore.
The simplest case. Source machine and target machine have the same chipset, NIC, storage controller. Restore image bit-for-bit. Boot. Done. No driver work needed.
Different hardware = DISM injection.
Replacement laptop is a different brand. New server has a different storage controller. Source-image drivers don’t load → BSOD on first boot. USB Recovery injects curated drivers offline so it boots — works for ~95% of cross-hardware cases.
Server-side bastion injection.
For Cloud Desktop launches, we inject AWS-specific drivers (ENA NIC, xenvbd storage) on a bastion EC2 before launching the customer instance. Even backups that have never seen AWS hardware boot on Nitro.
Different hardware = DISM driver injection.
Replacement laptop is a different brand. New server has different storage controller. Workstation has different NIC. Source-image drivers don’t load → BSOD on first boot.
- USB Recovery includes a driver harvest library — community-sourced + curated drivers for common chipsets, NICs, storage controllers, ENA / xenvbd
- We mount the restored OS image offline, inject drivers via DISM, update boot config, then boot
- Works for ~95% of cross-hardware cases
Driver injection
How DISM injection actually works.
For Cloud Desktop launches we run the same flow server-side: inject AWS-specific drivers (ENA NIC, xenvbd storage) on a bastion EC2 before launching the customer instance, so even backups that have never seen AWS hardware boot successfully on Nitro instances.
Mount the restored OS image offline
dism /Image:C:\restored /Mount-Wim:…
Inject driver packages
/Add-Driver /Driver:c:\drivers\nic\* /Recurse
Update boot configuration
/Set-Edition and BCDEdit fixups
Unmount and commit
Boot first time successfully
Curated library, monthly updates.
We maintain a curated driver library — common storage controllers, NICs, chipsets across Dell, HP, Lenovo, Surface, ARM Snapdragon, AWS Nitro, Hyper-V. Updates monthly. Customers can add custom drivers. Library ships with every Recovery USB and is hosted in our cloud for Cloud Desktop injection.
- Dell, HP, Lenovo, Surface, ARM Snapdragon, AWS Nitro, Hyper-V
- Updated monthly — customers can add custom drivers
- Ships with every Recovery USB + hosted in-cloud for Cloud Desktop
vs Acronis
They charge extra. We don’t.
Acronis Universal Restore is the only mainstream paid product offering true cross-hardware restore — and it’s an add-on cost on top of their backup. Veeam doesn’t have an equivalent. We ship cross-hardware restore in every tier, including DR Free.
Cross-hardware in every tier
Same-hardware, different-hardware, and cloud-injection restore are all included — including DR Free. No Universal-Restore-style add-on, ever.
See how we compare
Acronis charges extra for Universal Restore; Veeam has no equivalent. Compare the full disaster-recovery feature matrix side by side.
Learn moreBoots on the hardware you have. Free.
Same-hardware, different-hardware via DISM, and cloud bastion injection — included in every tier.