The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Mar. 18, 2003
Filed:
Jul. 26, 1999
Luis Felipe Cabrera, Bellevue, WA (US);
Kartik N. Raghavan, Seattle, WA (US);
Glenn A. Thompson, Redmond, WA (US);
Wesley Witt, Redmond, WA (US);
Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, WA (US);
Abstract
A method and system for recovering from a system failure wherein the failed system is restored to a new system that has different hardware. Hardware state is preserved during a backup process, and following a failure, a restore is performed to the extent possible using that hardware state but on a system having a different hardware configuration. Rules are provided for handling the differences through selective merging, arranging, and replacement of data, with the logic and work performed transparently to the user. Hardware state includes hard disk configuration information, the location (partition) of the operating system, devices installed on the system and any additional drivers to load. When restored, for hardware that is identical, the hardware state is restored as specified in the file. If the hardware state is not identical, then a set of rules are used to restore the hardware state. Via these rules, hard disks may be restored to differently sized or a different number of hard disks, disk mirror pairs may be handled appropriately, and so on. Critical devices that are required to restore the system are merged as necessary during the restore process, while new or different non-critical devices are preserved during the restore process for future use. Updated drivers may be used.