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- Overview
- Can I Boot Machine A with Rescue Media Created on Machine B?
- Booting Differences Between Machine A and B
- Hardware Differences Between Machine A and B
Overview
While Macrium Reflect rescue media is not specific to a single system, where possible, we recommend creating the rescue media on the system where it will be used. As a result, we recommend creating your rescue media as one of the first actions you take after installing Macrium Reflect, as described in our getting started article. However, we appreciate there are situations where a rescue media may not be available when recovering a system, and as a result, may need to be created on a second system.
Can I Boot Machine A with Rescue Media Created on Machine B?
The short answer to this question is yes. However, there are two main considerations when using rescue media on a different system from where it was created:
Booting Differences Between Machine A and B
If Machine A is a UEFI booting system, then it is likely that the rescue media will have been created as UEFI and will not boot if Machine B is an MBR booting system. Generally, newer systems implement UEFI firmware and booting, so this situation is becoming less common. You can check your system's firmware and boot mode by checking the BIOS or UEFI, or contacting the system or motherboard manufacturer.
Hardware Differences Between Machine A and B
During the creation of rescue media, Macrium Reflect will automatically harvest drivers from the computer where the rescue media is created; this ensures that the rescue media will be able to restore images to the system where it was created.
This means that the rescue media created on machine B will have the relevant drivers for machine B's hardware. If the rescue media is used to boot machine A, the correct drivers may not be present to communicate with the hardware. In the example below, the required storage drivers are not present, meaning that no disks are displayed in the rescue media:
In these cases, manual driver management may be required to ensure that the rescue media can communicate with machine A's hardware. This article contains more information about driver management.