Bare Metal Restore

A bare metal restore is a type of computer restoration process that restores the full software configuration from a specific system. It may be used to restore a computer system from a backup or simply migrate the software configuration from one machine to another.

The terms "restore" and "bare metal restore" are often used interchangeably, since they both refer to bringing a computer back to a specific state. However, a bare metal restore is unique in that it can be used to restore a specific software configuration to a dissimilar hardware configuration. For example, a bare metal restore may used to restore a Linux system to a new computer made by a different manufacturer. I can also be used to restore a complete system to a new hard drive with different partition sizes.

A bare metal restore is similar to a disk image restore, since both types of restores are used to rebuild a computer's software from scratch. However, a disk image restore simply copies the data bit-for-bit to a specific storage device. This may cause problems if the new hardware does not support certain configurations contained in the disk image. Therefore, web hosting companies and network admins often create "bare metal backups" for their clients, which can be used to perform a bare metal restore.