Restore entire Windows or Linux machines

You can restore a full machine or volume to a previous state using recovery media. The ActiveProtect Recovery Media Creator helps you create recovery media for bare-metal or volume-level restores on both Windows and Linux machines.

You can download this tool from the Recovery Portal or the Download Center (under Desktop Utilities).

To restore data from your Synology NAS, refer to Restorations after joining an ActiveProtect site for details.

Requirements and limitations

• To restore Windows machines, you need to install the ActiveProtect Recovery Media Creator. The following operating systems are supported:
  • Windows 11 (all editions)
  • Windows 10 (all editions)
  • Windows Server 2022
  • Windows Server 2019
  • Windows Server 2016
• Network connection is required during restoration.
• We recommend installing all the required drivers before restoration.
• Only simple volumes are supported for dynamic disk restorations.
• Supported media types:
  • USB drives:
    • Required capacity: 1 GB
    • Required local system volume storage capacity for temporary files: 2.5 GB
    • Supported recovery model: UEFI 64-bit
  • ISO images:
    • Required capacity: 1 GB
    • Required local system volume storage capacity for temporary files: 2.5 GB
    • Supported recovery model: Legacy/UEFI 64-bit

Install ActiveProtect Recovery Media Creator

1. Sign in to your ActiveProtect appliance.
2. Go to Machines > PCs/Macs or Physical Servers to select your machine.
3. Click More > Open Recovery Portal.
4. Click Restore > Restore Entire Machine and download the ActiveProtect Recovery Media Creator.

You can also download ActiveProtect Recovery Media Creator from the Download Center (under Desktop Utilities). For Linux, it's available as an ISO image named "Synology-Recovery-Media.iso".

Create recovery media

With ActiveProtect Recovery Media Creator, you can create a bootable USB drive or ISO image for CD creation. Boot from these media to access the embedded recovery tool and restore your machine from your backup server.

Create recovery media for Windows

1. Launch the ActiveProtect Recovery Media Creator and select USB media or ISO media:
   • For USB media, insert a USB drive with the required capacity.
   • For ISO media, specify the location where the recovery media will be saved.
2. Click Create.
3. If Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit (ADK) or Windows Preinstallation Environment (Windows PE) isn't installed, the media creator will guide you through the installation process. Make sure Deployment Tools and Windows Preinstallation Environment are selected to build recovery media.
4. For USB media, choose your target USB drive and click Create. Once the process begins, it can't be undone.
5. The recovery media automatically detects and applies your time zone and language settings to the recovery environment. If they can't be detected, Pacific Standard Time (PST) and English will be used as defaults. This may affect how backup times are shown in the ActiveProtect Recovery Tool.
6. After the recovery media has been created, a message will appear on the progress bar.
7. Click Finish to open the directory for storing the ISO image. You can either mount the image onto the virtual machine intended for restoration, or burn the image onto a disk by using a third-party tool and insert the disk into the machine that you want to restore.

Create recovery media for Linux

ActiveProtect recovery media for Linux is implemented via ISO images, which can also be burned to a USB.

Before you start, make sure you've download the ISO file "Synology-Recovery-Media.iso". Refer to Install ActiveProtect Recovery Media Creator for instructions.

Create a bootable USB drive with ISO burning software

1. Use 3rd-party ISO burning software to copy "Synology-Recovery-Media.iso" onto a USB drive or DVD.
2. You can use this USB drive or DVD to boot up the machine you want to restore.

Create a bootable USB drive for Legacy BIOS

1. Open a Linux Terminal and enter the following command to install the packages and dependencies. Ubuntu will be used as an example.
   apt-get install syslinux syslinux-utils
2. Insert a USB drive.
3. List all the partitions to locate the inserted USB drive. The partitions are displayed by their machine's names. For example: "/dev/sda", "/dev/sdb" or "/dev/sdc". Here, we will use "/dev/sdc" as an example.
   fdisk -l
4. Enter the following command to format the USB drive to FAT32. Replace "/dev/sdc" with the actual name of the USB drive.
   mkdosfs -I /dev/sdc -F 32
5. Enter the following command to copy "Synology-Recovery-Media.iso" to the USB drive.
   dd if=Synology-Recovery-Media.iso of=/dev/sdc bs=1M
6. You can use this USB drive to boot up the machine you want to restore.

Create a bootable USB drive for UEFI

1. Open a Linux Terminal and enter the following command to mount the downloaded recovery media. Ubuntu will be used as an example.

   mkdir -p /mnt/apm

   mount -o loop Synology-Recovery-Media.iso /mnt/apm

2. Insert a USB drive.
3. List all the partitions to locate the inserted USB drive. The partitions are displayed by their machine's names. Here, we will use "/dev/sdc" as an example.
   fdisk -l
4. Enter the following commands to set the USB drive as a GPT formatted disk and create an EFI system partition.
   fdisk /dev/sdc
   • g: Create a new empty GPT partition table
   • n and 1: Create a partition with default values
   • t and 1: Change the partition type to EFI system partition
   • w: Save changes
   
5. Enter the following command to format the volume you newly created.
   mkfs.vfat -I /dev/sdc1
6. Enter the following command to mount the volume.

   mkdir -p /mnt/usb

   mount /dev/sdc1 /mnt/usb

7. Enter the following command to copy "Synology-Recovery-Media.iso" to the USB drive.
   cp -r /mnt/apm/* /mnt/usb/
8. Enter the following command to unmount the USB drive and the recovery media.

   umount /mnt/usb

   umount /mnt/apm

9. You can use this USB drive to boot up the machine you want to restore.

Boot recovery media

Once you have successfully created recovery media for the machine to be restored, you can use your recovery drive to boot the machine from it.

1. Mount the ISO image or insert a USB into the machine to be restored.
2. Press F2 to enter the BIOS mode. Note that this hotkey may vary by vendor.
3. Go to Boot and prioritize CD-ROM Drive or Removable Devices depending on the location of the recovery media.
4. Exit the setup process and you'll be directed to the ActiveProtect Recovery Tool to start the restoration.

Restore your machine

Load drivers and network adapters (optional)

On the ActiveProtect Recovery Tool:

1. Click the ⋯ more icon > List of hardware drivers.
2. Check if drivers and network adapters need to be installed.
3. If required, click Load Drivers.

Restore from the backup server

On the ActiveProtect Recovery Tool:

1. Enter your management server's credentials.¹
2. Select the workload that you want to restore. Workloads with self-service restore or delegated restore permissions are displayed here.
3. Specify the restore mode.
4. Select the backup version² that you want to restore.
   • If the selected version requires more drivers, you will get a notification. To resolve this issue, load the required drivers and try again.
   • If the selected version requires additional space, you will get a notification listing all the drives that require more capacity. To resolve this issue, consider replacing the installed drives.³
5. Confirm the summary and click Next.

Once the restoration has begun⁴, it's not possible to stop it or to roll it back to where the machine was before the recovery. Cancellation during the process may prevent the machine from booting successfully.

Troubleshoot Windows restoration issues

Recovery media creation fails

If the creation process fails at any point, the ActiveProtect Recovery Media Creator will automatically finish the current stage, and then unmount and delete boot.wim. Recovery media created in USB format can't be rolled back once the creation process has begun.

If recovery media creation fails during the creation process, open the extracted folder named Synology Restore Media Creator and fetch the log titled restore-media.log. Then, send the log to Synology Technical Support for further assistance.

Recovery fails

If a bare-metal or volume-level recovery has failed, you can retrieve recovery logs and send it to Synology Technical Support for further assistance.

Note that "recovery.log" is only retrievable via the ActiveProtect Recovery Tool before you restart or shut down your machine.

1. Click the gear icon > Command-line interface.
2. Enter "notepad" and press Enter to launch Notepad. Select Open in Notepad to check the drive letter of the inserted USB drive.
3. Enter the following command to copy the file to the USB drive. You will see a confirmation message after running the command. For example, if the drive letter of the USB drive is "S", the command should look like this:

   copy X:\ActiveProtectRecovery\recovery.log* S:

   xcopy /E /I X:\ActiveProtectRecovery\resource\command S:

4. Go to the USB drive where you copied the log files and send them to Synology Technical Support for further troubleshooting.

Recovery Tool crashes

If the AcitveProtect Recovery Tool crashes when you're trying to perform a bare-metal or volume-level recovery, find the dump file and send it to Synology Technical Support for further assistance.

1. Enter "notepad" and press Enter to launch Notepad. Select Open in Notepad to check the drive letter of the inserted USB drive.
2. Enter the following command to copy the dump file, log file, and other files to the USB drive. You will see a confirmation message after running the command. For example, if the drive letter of the USB drive is "S", the command should look like this:

   copy X:\ActiveProtectRecovery\recovery.log* S:

   copy X:\recovery.dmp S:

   xcopy /E /I X:\ActiveProtectRecovery\resource\command S:

3. Go to the USB drive where you copied the files and send them to Synology Technical Support for further troubleshooting.